The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-12-22
THE FIRST SESSION

y"HE FIRST session of the VI League of Nations has now passed into history. On the eigh journed to meet again the first Mon day in September. 1921.
 These five weeks have been per haps the most critical weeks when the League will ever be called on to pass through. In them it demon able, growing, and to grow. organ ization. It neither developed the weaknesses predicted by its enemies and fell to pieces. nor on the other hand, did 1t prove to be the super human institution which some" of it's more enthusiastic promoters had tried to make it out, but there was not a moment of the five weeks when it could be said that it was "deceased" or by any stretch of imagination be truthfu1ly said to be in moribund condition.
 The fact that differences crept in, some of them bitter, is a cause for congratuIation. to those who would sAe the League live, for such differ
 ees are inevitable in the handling of any large matters where diverse in- terests are concerned, and that they could have been met and settled, or postponed, by the League in its maid en session while it was feeling its way toward organization and mem ods, and in the fierce light of pub . Betty, some of it frankly unfriendly, which it was under. is proof of its essential vitality.
 It must be remembered in consid- ering this first session of the League that what it accomplished was in the face of opposition which, if not always apparent was none the less real, for the League had many enem- ies, beside those in the United States. who were hoping to see it's first ses- sion break up in disgracefu1 dissen- sfons. These foes of the League are well classified in a statement of Lord Robert Cecil.
 ''We have" said he, "enemies, bit ter enemies. There are the mi1itar- ists, who believe there is only one way to settle human disputes-war. There are the bureaucrats. who can't be- ueve the system in which they were brought up Is unfit for modern condi- lions. There are the reactionaries frightened at anything new. There are the revolutionaries who see. and rightly, in the League a barrier against revolution
 It is in the face of such influences that the League in the words of Paul Hy1nans developed a consciousness and now resolves to live. and will delegation, who has been prominent in the sessions of the assembly. voic- ed a similar sentiment. saying:
 '-rhe first assembly of the League of Nations has satisfied its friends and disappointed it's enemies. Its most significant feature is the fact that for five weeks representative! from forty-one different nations have found it possible to cooperate or great variety of matters and In ternauonal concerns and as the as sembly progressed it has developed in an increasing measure a corpor ate consciousness, a sense of powe and authority, and the conviction tha it serves great purpose. That guar antees It's future.
 When it comes to specific cases O Accomplishment, the session just clos ed at Geneva probabl has as man to its credit as the present congres of the United States in correspond ing length of time, or even in a many months. The session closed wit a larger membership than it opened and no evidence of anything occur ing which will make easier for Sen ator Harding and his group to coa the forty odd nations to abandon thei actual League for his visionary asso citation.