Evening star., 1927-09-04
BY FRANK III. SIMONDS.

THE eighth assembly of the
League of Nations, which
meets in the opening days of
Il September, faces a situation
far different from that of the
previous year. The league fortunes
were Enthusiastically mounting. The
prestige which had been lost by the
Spring fiasco, when German admission
had been postponed by league politics,
had been in part regained by the later
adjustment of the dispute over the
Polish seat on the council. Locarno
remained a fact to conjure with, and
Franco-German reconciliation supplied
shining background.
From the moment of BRANDS ad-
dress Of welcome to Stresemann to
the present hour, however, it is mani
fest that league affairs have gone
badly and league prestige has suf-
fered. 1t was possible-patently pos
sible-to persuade the French to
hasten the evacuation of the Rhine
land in return for large financial re-
wards, but these were available only
with British consent and American
contribution. And British opposition
closed the incident.
Thus Enthusiastically. IL without any
great crisis, Franco-German relations
have slipped backward. The French
garrisons are in the Rhineland. Ger
man membership in the league has
not brought the reward which alone
insured German entrance. League
fortunes have suffered a patent, il
temporary, diminution in Germany,
and the opponents of both Locarno
and the league have found cause for
self f-congratulation. What made the
league a hope and a promise for the
Germans seems to many Of them now
to have been an illusion.
Failure of Conference.
But the larger cause of the present
low point in league reputation must
be recognized to lie in the failure of
the disarmament conference of the
Winter and Spring, not the tripartite
naval affair, but that conducted under
auspices of the league. Here the diff
ferences between the British and the
continental nations prevented every
useful step forward. Precisely as in
the later Geneva conference Of the
naval powers, it proved impossible to
accommodate two sets of views as to
limitation.
The French and the British, like
the British and the Americans later.
ostensibly, and even honestly, sought
for limitation, but the utterly diver
gent vital problems of each made any
system satisfactory to both impossi-
BILE. And, of course, the continental
states. with problems analogous to
the French, supported Boncour and
not Cecil.
1t is true that the later failure Of
the sea powers to find a formula for
limitation of naval strength has in u
sense reduced the moral consequences
of the league failure. 1t has served
to demonstrate again the inherent
| difficulties in the question itself and
to disclose the fact that if the league
has no peculiar genius or machinery
for solving the riddle, there is no
easier and better method outside of its
organization.
Nevertheless, in dealing with the
limitation of armaments the league
failed in a fashion which holds out
little hope of any prompt recovery.
There was nothing achieved that any
REASONABLE or even sanely, optimistic
observer could interpret as holding
out the promise that at a later date
progress could be made. In a word,
the failure was absolute, and the ad-
journment, however covered by pious
hopes and solemn communiques. could
dIlu OSC6lt0 IlO OilS.
Must Consider Armaments.
Not alone in the United States but
everywhere in the world there has
been the natural conception that the
league could end must deal with the
whole question Of ornaments. Out.
side of the United States, at least,
there has been the double conviction
that nowhere else could progress be
made and something done in the in
terests of world peace and tranquil
lity.
Meantime. following the failure of
the league to deal with the disarma-
ment matter in any useful fashion,
the general European situation has
been disturbed. Incidents between
Jugoslavia on the one hand and Italy
and Albania on the other have more
than a little unpleasantly suggested
the Serajevo prelude to the Arma-
geddon of 1914. The whole Balkan
world has been uneasy, and the very
| recent death of the King of Rumania
and the subsequent quarrel over the
succession has served to establish the
fact that here tranquility is still as
unlikely as at any time in innumer-
able centuries.
The Balkan powder mine Is smok.
ing again. And during the period
when the Italo-Slav affair was most
acute there was distressing silence
in Geneva; there was the same old
indication of desire to avoid the dam
gerous possibility Of reference to the
league which would inevitably bring
the league into collision with the pol
icy OF great power, or once more,