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## STAFFING THE INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SERVICE

The Influence of Nationality in Recruitments to the League of Nations Secretariat, 1922-1930

By: Jacob Nedergaard Historie

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ABSTRACT:  This  article  examines  how  nationality  influenced  recruitment  of  the  highest-ranking officials  to  three  of  the  smaller,  political  sections  in  the  League  of  Nations  Secretariat  during  the organization's  most  successful  years  between  1922  and  1930.  From  three,  separate  case-studies,  it  is shown that although the official policies favored the hiring of nationals from underrepresented member states, other factors such as the individual section's autonomy and policy field further complicated the process of finding the right nationals for vacant positions. This meant that the established protocols for recruitment  were  oftentimes  ignored  or  circumvented  in  attempts  to  guarantee  the  most  suitable candidates.

KEYWORDS: League of Nations Secretariat, Recruitment, Nationality, Governance

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## Introduction

In April 1917 shortly before the United States' entry into the First World War, President Woodrow Wilson famously proclaimed that 'The world must be made safe for democracy'. 1 While the main intention  behind  this  statement  was  to  justify  entering  the  war  on  the  side  of  the  Allies,  it  also reflected desires for a different post-war international order. Already in 1916, Wilson had shared his  visions  of  a  new  era  in  global  political  cooperation  which  was  to  be  spearheaded  by  a  novel international organization with peacekeeping as its central objective (Mazower 2012: 122). Three years  later  these  visions  turned  into  reality  at  the  Versailles  Peace  Conference  with  the  formal establishment of the League of Nations.

The League of Nations organization came to be structured around three, institutional units: Two of these units, the Council, and the Assembly, were to be comprised of delegates representing their own nation. Whereas the Council's only permanent delegates represented the great powers postWW1  (Britain,  France,  Italy,  and  Japan),  the  Assembly  was  structured  as  a  parliament  with representatives  from  all League  member states. The Assembly was meant to be the driving force behind the League's activities with the Council providing the direction for its work (Walters 1952: 43-65).  The  third  unit,  named  as  the  'Secretariat'  in  the  official  covenant,  was,  however, fundamentally different in its role, composition and capabilities compared with the Council and the Assembly. It was the only permanent body within the League institution and was responsible for administrative tasks in relation to the Assembly and the Council's work. Known as the world's first international  civil  service,  the  League  Secretariat  consisted  of  employees  from  different  member states which, importantly, were employed to serve the institution rather than their home country.

Despite  its employees  serving  the  institution rather than  following  national  interests, the Secretariat's national composition was still deemed important by the League's member states and the  leaders  of  the  Secretariat  itself.  This  article  highlights  the  importance  of  the  Secretariat's composition of nationalities by investigating the process of recruitment to the League Secretariat.

1 Cited from President Wilson's Joint Address to Congress, Leading to a Declaration of War against Germany , April 2nd, 1917; Records of the United States Senate; Record Group 46; National Archives.

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For  many  years  following  the  dissolvement  of  the  organization  in  1946,  the  League  Secretariat received little, scholarly attention. Up until 1950 there were a couple noteworthy publications by former  employees  within  the  League  institution. 2 In  the  four  succeeding  decades  the  League  of Nations was deemed above all else as a failed, international security experiment. It was not until the transnational turn in the 1990's that scholars developed curiosity for exploring institutional and practical workings of the League institution and its Secretariat during its fruitful years. Recently, the institutional set-up, administration, and practices of the League institution have come to the forefront of research. Scholars have increasingly shown interest in core, foundational elements of the League. 3

The  source  materiel  analyzed  in  this  article  describes  the  workings  of  the  League  Secretariat's Appointments Committee (AC); a sub-body of the Secretariat established in 1922 with the purpose of assisting and advising the Secretary General on recruitments to the Secretariat. By investigating an extensive collection of minutes which document the meetings of the AC between 1922 and 1930, I aim to explore how the aspect of nationality affected, constrained, and guided recruitment of the highest-ranking  employees  known  as  First  Division  Officials  to  the  League  Secretariat.  It  is important  to  note  that  the  latter  was  not  comprised  as  one,  collective  entity  but  was  instead subdivided in several different, functionally specialized subsections. Therefore, the analysis of this article  is  separated  into  three  parts,  each  covering  recruitment  to  three,  political  sections  of  the Secretariat: The Disarmament Section, the Minorities Section and the Mandates Section. I focus on appointments for these sections during arguably the League's heyday between 1922 and 1930, where

2 See  for  instance  Ranshofen-Wertheimer,  Egon, The  International  Secretariat:  A  Great  Experiment  in  International Administration , (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1945) and F. P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations (London: OUP, 1952).

3 A couple mentions here are  Klaas  Dykmann, 'How International was the Secretariat  of  the  League  of  Nations?', The International  Historical  Review  37 ,  no.  4  (2015):  721-744  and  Karen  Gram-Skjoldager  &  Haakon  A.  Ikonomou,  'The Construction  of  the  League  of  Nations  Secretariat.  Formative  Practices  of  Autonomy  and  Legitimacy  in  International Organizations', The International Historical Review 41 , no. 2 (2019): 257-279 and Karen Gram-Skjoldager, Karen, Haakon A. Ikonomou, and Torsten Kahlert, 'Scandinavians and the League of Nations Secretariat, 1919-1946', Scandinavian Journal of History 44 , no. 4 (2019): 454-483.

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the onset of the Great Depression gradually resulted in a more hostile environment for international policymaking. 4

## Establishing protocols for bureaucratic recruitment (19191922)

Before answering the main questions of this article, I consider it necessary to first provide a brief sketch of the evolution in bureaucratic recruitment during the first years of the League's existence. Although recruitment practices were dynamic and continued to develop throughout the organization's  lifespan,  it  was  during  these  early  years  that  the  ruleset  for  recruitment  to  the Secretariat were put in place. By mid-1922, the AC had been formerly established similarly to the protocols on which it was to evaluate candidates for vacant posts in the International Civil Service.

## The creation of the League and early recruitment

The  Permanent  Secretariat  was  not  given  much  attention  by  the  League's  founders  during  the process of creating its Covenant. A set of notes included in the British Draft Convention contained a proposal with suggestions on how the 'Secretary-General' should be able to choose his staff of secretaries (Ranshofen-Wertheimer 1945: 42-43). Neither this nor other early proposals ended up eventually  being  included  in  the  organization's  foundational  document.  On  the  matter  of  the internal administration of staff, the Covenant simply stated that 'The secretaries and staff of the Secretariat shall be appointed by the Secretary-General with the approval of the Council' (Walters 1952: 46-47). The primary authority in staff appointments was therefore initially put solely in the hands of the Secretary-General. Though the Council became equipped with the power of vetoing candidates,  this  never  ended  up  as  a  huge  constrain  on  recruitment  to  the  organization.  Many officials started working in the Secretariat before their appointment had acquired the Council's final approval (Ranshofen-Wertheimer 1945: 42-43).

4 For a more detailed account of the interwar-period and the consequences of the Great Depression on international politics, see Zara Steiner, The Lights that Failed: European International History 1919-1933 (Oxford: OUP, 2007).

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With  the  absence  of  any a  priori bureaucratic  procedures  for  recruitment  and  given  absolute authority to appoint whoever he saw fit, a large responsibility was put on the first Secretary-General, Eric Drummond, to shape the organization for the future. The former British Diplomat envisioned the  League  Secretariat  as  a  truly international Civil  Service  where  the  officials  would  commit themselves to serve the institution rather than their own nation. In his view, the sections within the Secretariat should also not be structured around nationality but around different policy areas. Still, Drummond regarded the composition of nationalities in the Secretariat as important. While the composition of his early staff in mid-1919 included mostly citizens of Northern Europe, he was prepared to oversee appointments to each Section going forward to safeguard the right proportions of nationals (Gram-Skjoldager & Ikonomou 2019: 260-263).

The early  recruitment  decisions  in  1919  and  1920  to  the  Secretariat  made  by  Drummond  have rightfully been characterized by scholars as 'unbureaucratic' in nature. 5 The evolution towards a bureaucratization and formalization of recruitment practices was sparked initially by dissatisfaction in the Assembly over the absence of competitive examinations. As a result, an agreement was reached within the 4 th Committee of the First Assembly in November 1920 in which the Secretary-General accepted  to  set  up  a  body  which  could  assist  him  in  selecting  and  appointing  his  staff.  This culminated in the creation of the Staff Committee which turned into the Appointments Committee (AC) in January 1922. The AC's role was to assist the Secretary-General in all matters regarding appointments, promotion, and discharge of staff to and within the League Secretariat. Its members had to possess the rank of director at minimum and were chosen solely by the Secretary-General himself (Ranshofen-Wertheimer 1945: 318-319). Although Drummond still had the final word in matters of staff administration, the AC guided his decision-making while ensuring both institutional and national backing for candidates.

5 For an example of early, non-bureaucratic recruitment to the League Secretariat see Haakon A. Ikonomou, 'He used to give me Turkish lessons in Constantinople': How to Get a Job in the League Secretariat,' in The League of Nations, Perspectives from the Present , eds. Haakon A. Ikonomou & Karen Gram-Skjoldager (Aarhus University Press, 2019), 113-123.

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## The issue of national representation

When national delegates made a proposal for competitive examinations in 1920, their wish for wider and more adequate, national representation had not yet been clearly articulated. Nevertheless, the proposal ended up as the precursor for a later discussion which uncovered more deep-rooted issues of  inequality  between  member  states.  When  the  Assembly  gathered  the  following  year  in  1921, staunch attacks were launched by the Indian delegation targeted at the disproportionate, national representation in the Secretariat. It was exposed how Britain, France, and Switzerland benefitted economically from the institution as the salaries to officials of their nation far exceeded the amount which they contributed to the League's budget. On the contrary, many of the smaller non-European nations had few or even no citizens working in the Secretariat despite contributing financially to the organization.  This  led  these  nations  to  demand  equality  in  representation  between  Western European and non-Western European nations. This proposal, which essentially entailed equality in rights and influence between Western European and non-Western European member states, could by no means be adopted in the eyes of Secretary-General Eric Drummond. Following his dismissal of the challenge to European political and cultural superiority, he went as far as to guarantee the smaller  members  a  gradual  progression  towards  wider  national  representation  in  the  Secretariat (Gram-Skjoldager & Ikonomou 2019: 265-268).

The  first  indication  of  this  promise  is  found  when  comparing  the  two  editions  of  the  Staff Regulations  from  1921  and  1922  respectively.  In  the  1921  edition  it  is  stated  that  the  Staff Committee  would  'endeavor  to  reconcile  the  requirements  of  efficiency,  economy  and  the international  character  of  the  Secretariat'. 6 The  Civil  Service's  'international  character'  is  only mentioned as one of three aspects of importance, which does not indicate a particular emphasis on this aspect relative to the other two. The smaller member states' call for equality in representation prompted an amendment to this clause in the following year's edition. Unlike the edition of 1921,

6 Staff Regulations 1st Edition, Geneva, 1 June 1921.

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the  June  1922  edition  clearly  states  that  'special  regard  shall  be  had  to  the  maintenance  and development of the international character of the organization.' 7

Furthermore,  the  1922-edition  emphasizes  that  in  the  case  of  candidates  possessing  equal qualifications  'preference  shall  be  given  to  a  candidate  whose  nationality  is  not  adequately represented in the staff.' Although the smaller member states had not managed to secure full equality in representation from a budgetary perspective, they had been successful in causing notable changes to  the  protocol  for  recruitment  in  favor  of  lesser-represented  nations.  Still,  the  importance  of nationality  in  staff  questions  was,  for  practical  reasons,  mostly  limited  to  First  Division  staff members, as these employees held the biggest responsibilities for the work in their respective sections (Ranshofen-Wertheimer 1945: 354-364).

In  the  upcoming  section  of  this  article,  recruitment  cases  of  First  Division  members  will  be discussed, since it was the recruitment of these higher-ranking officials that prompted more careful considerations  by  the  AC.  In  the  following,  it  will  be  investigated  how  the  internationalization principle, as well as other concerns related to nationality, were considered and acted upon by the committee during its first eight years of existence. I will start off with the section of the Secretariat which was given responsibility for what was deemed the League's most important task by its founder and contemporaries: collective security.

7 Staff Regulations 1st Edition, Geneva, 1 June 1922.

Disarmament Section

Number of 1st Division Contracts, 1919-1946

33

Women

Men

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Italian 27 %

## The Disarmament Section

Fig. 1 Disarmament Section. Statistics and Visualizations: Haakon A. Ikonomou, Yuan Chen, Obaida Hanteer, Jonas Tilsted 'Visualizing the League of Nations Secretariat - a Digital Research Tool' (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2023)

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From its very creation, the maintenance of world peace had been designated as the League's most important task. Intrinsically linked with this objective was the notion of disarmament. Article eight of the Covenant stated that there could be no long-lasting peace without the 'reduction in national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety' (Walters 1952: 48). It was therefore only  natural  that  the  League  Secretariat  should  have  a  section  devoted  to  the  policy  area  of disarmament.  Given  the  huge  importance  attributed  to  this  issue,  one  might  have  expected  the Disarmament Section in the Secretariat to become highly influential for the disarmament process. This, however, did not end up happening. For the Great Powers, the issue of disarmament was a sensitive policy field, and they did not wish to cede any autonomy to an International Civil Service. As a result, the Disarmament Section ended up becoming by far the least politically autonomous section of the Secretariat (Ikonomou 2021: 321-334).

It  made  little  sense  for  the  powerful  League-members  like  Britain  and  France  to  keep  a  large representation in the Disarmament Section when any disarmament policies would be decided in their national governments rather than the League Secretariat. Therefore, the demand of the Great

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Powers for full national autonomy on disarmament policies ended up creating room for citizens of smaller powers to obtain leading positions in the Disarmament Section. All three of the section's directors  throughout  its  lifespan  were  citizens  of  smaller  powers,  including  the  first  Chief  (and eventually Director) of Section, Salvador de Madariaga. During a discussion of his appointment at an AC meeting in the fall of 1922, Drummond stated that he considered the hiring of the Spaniard a good thing 'from a political point of view', since he had been 'continually receiving requests from Spain  for  the  appointment  of  one  of  their  nationality  as  director'. 8 As  noted  by  the  Secretary General, it was fortunate that 'the man best suited for the job had happened to be from Spain', since  this  made  the  appointment  align  with  the  objective  of  giving  Spain  a  more  adequate representation in the Secretariat. 9 Granting a leading role in the Disarmament Section to a citizen of a smaller and ex-neutral member state would appear as a significant action towards strengthening the Secretariat's international character.

Thus, while Great Power citizens were outside the considerations when new directors had to be hired for the Disarmament Section, the options could still be plentiful and difficult to decide for Drummond and the AC. This was especially the case in 1930 following the previous Norwegian Director Eric Colban's resignation. 10 One of the applicants for the vacant directorship at the time was the Greek jurist and longtime Secretariat official, Thanassis Aghnides. In his application letter to  Drummond, Aghnides explicitly argues for his own suitability  to  the post  from  a  nationality perspective;  Greece  is  underrepresented  in  the  League's  'most  important  organs'  relative  to countries of 'lesser political importance'. 11 From his long time serving in the Secretariat, Aghnides appears  to  have  been  perfectly  aware  of  what  and  how  national  considerations  influenced recruitment to a post such as the director of the Disarmament Section. His inside knowledge of the institution was undoubtedly part of what landed him the job in mid-1930.

8 It was common for national governments to put forward their own candidates to the League Secretariat. For a discussion about this form of recruitment and to what extend it was practiced from the context of Scandinavian officials working in the Secretariat, see Gram-Skjoldager, Ikonomou & Kahlert, 'Scandinavians', 454-483.

9 S954-1, Minutes, 8 th AC-Meeting, June 27 th , 1922.

10 S956-2, Minutes, 3 rd AC-Meeting, March 4 th , 1930.

11 LONA-700 - Personnel File, Thanassis Aghnides

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It turns out that the First Division staff in the Disarmament Section was not only comprised by citizens of smaller League member states. The unique circumstances surrounding the section and its work even permitted an ex-Russian émigré to play a substantial role in its limited contributions to the disarmament scheme. The native-Ukrainian lawyer, Nokhem Sloutzki, became associated with the League Secretariat for the first time in 1921 when working for a few months in the Economic and Financial Section. Following a brief hiatus, he was hired to the Secretariat once again in 1922, this time as a statistician for the Disarmament Section. Due to being formally of Russian nationality, he was ineligible to obtain a permanent contract until 1934 when the USSR joined the League of Nations.  In  the  years  prior  he  was  kept  on  temporary  contracts  for  one  to  two  years  at  a  time. According to Madariaga, his first boss in the Disarmament Section, these temporary appointments caused Sloutzki 'considerable anxiety'. 12 Nevertheless, Sloutzki stayed with the section throughout these years to the satisfaction of the Spanish director. AC member and Under Secretary General, Bernardo Attolico, also appears to have been relieved when he could report to the AC in 1925 that Sloutzki had rejected a job proposal from the International Labour Organization in favor of staying with the League Secretariat. 13

The reoccurring contract 'renewals' handed out to Sloutzki is indicative of an employee whose work was highly valued. Much of the reason for this was the ex-Russian's contribution to the section's most  important  work.  Throughout  its  publication  history,  Sloutzki  was  the  chief  editor  of  the Armaments Year-Book , a statistical data collection of national armaments published on a yearly basis (Lincove 2018: 507). In a section drained of political influence the yearbook became a way for the Disarmament Section to facilitate disarmament talks by providing public available information on armaments, a pledge initially agreed to by the member states and included in Article Eight of the Covenant (Walters 1952: 48). With this in mind it is easy to understand the desire to continually renew Sloutzki's temporary contract despite the fact that this circumvented the established protocols prohibiting citizens of non-member states to be permanently employed in Secretariat.

12 S955-1, Minutes, 10 th AC-Meeting, November 20 th , 1925.

13 LONA-S883 - Personnel File, Nokhem Sloutzki.

Minorities Section

Number of 1st Division Contracts, 1919-1946

24

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Sloutzki's long 'temporary' affiliation is also indicative of a section with relatively loose nationalityspecific constrains on recruitment. As mentioned earlier, the directorship was reserved for citizens of  smaller  member  states.  Although  this  did  constrain  recruitment  to  a  certain  extent,  it  also provided the opportunity to satisfy national governments and to work towards adequate national representation in the Secretariat as a whole. With most of the political section's work ending up as information dissemination, it allowed room  for special cases of employment  outside  the institutionalized norms, which is illustrated by Nokhem Sloutzki's employment.

## The Minorities Section

Fig. 2 Minorities Section. Statistics and Visualizations: Haakon A. Ikonomou, Yuan Chen, Obaida Hanteer, Jonas Tilsted 'Visualizing the League of Nations Secretariat - a Digital Research Tool' (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2023)

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Whereas the Disarmament Section had been deliberately exhausted by The Great Powers of most of its political room for initiative, it was a different story for the Minorities Section. The Covenant itself did not initially prescribe minority protection as one of the League's responsibilities. Instead, it was the peace treaties conducted after the First World War by the victors with certain nation states of  Eastern  Europe  which  brought  the  complications  of  national  minority  protection  within  the League's sphere of work. In these treaties, clauses were inserted that guaranteed the protection of national minorities within specific Eastern European States (Azcárate 1945: 92-101). The League was given the role of guarding the rights of these minorities and would effectively act as a broker in

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disagreements over the issue (Mazower 1997: 47-63). As the only year-round permanent body of the League organization, the Secretariat - and more specifically the Minorities Section - naturally ended up performing different tasks associated with this responsibility. The administrative work in the section was centered around the petition system; national minorities had the opportunity to send in complaints in case their rights had been violated. These petitions would then be assessed by the  Minorities  Section  with  regards  to  whether  the  case  was  to  be  discussed  by  the  Council  or referred to the Permanent Court of Justice in Hague. 14

In  comparison  to  the  Disarmament  Section,  the  Minorities  Section  was  granted  much  more autonomy by the Great Powers. A big reason for this was the unilateral enforcement of the minority protection policy; only specific Eastern European countries were subject to international oversight and the inherent violation of national sovereignty it entailed, while the Great Powers had no formal obligations regarding their own minority groups. 15 The staff in the Minorities Section amounted to 11 contracted officials in 1922 compared to 12 in the Disarmament Section. The Scandinavian influence in the Minorities section was also evident at this early stage. In 1922, three Scandinavian officials (two Norwegians and one Dane) worked in the section, including the Norwegian Director of Section, Erik Andreas Colban (1876-1956). 16 Consistency was a key descriptor for the Minorities Section under Drummond, a fact underlined by the recruitment patterns of the Section's personnel; five out of eleven officials from the Section in 1922 were still a part of its staff more than ten years later in 1933. 17

One of these long-lasting officials in the section was the Spanish lawyer Pablo de Azcárate. 18 Azcárate was hired to the section in the fall of 1922 and his appointment provides an interesting case study for  multiple reasons. Firstly, Azcárate ended up working in the section for almost 15 years, and during the last three he possessed the highest position as director. Secondly, his appointment to the

14 As pointed out by Mazower, the petition system often failed to properly address offenders of minority rights, although there were notable success stories, such as the way in which the Aaland Islands dispute between Sweden and Finland was solved in

1921. Mazower, 'Minorities', 47-56.

15 Mazower, 'Minorities', 52-56.

16 For  more  information  about  the  Scandinavian  presence  in  the  League  Secretariat,  see  Gram-Skjoldager,  Ikonomou  & Kahlert, 'Scandinavians', 454-483.

17 'LoN Administrative and Minorities Section,' LONSEA, accessed May 17 th , 2022, http://www.lonsea.de/pub/org/1207. 18 'Pablo de Azcárate,' LONSEA, accessed May 17 th , 2022. http://www.lonsea.de/pub/person/5041.

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Minorities  section  was  one  of  the  earliest  ones  concluded  in  the  wake  of  the  republished  Staff Regulations in 1922 which, as mentioned earlier, shifted the priorities for recruitment to clearly favor candidates of non-adequately represented nations. 19 In this regard, Azcárate's appointment did not follow the intentions behind the newly adopted regulations, since Spain was already adequately represented in the Secretariat at the time. 20

Colban did what he could to reassure the AC of his hard attempts to find other suitable candidates. The Norwegians' interest to hire the Spaniard to the vacant post in the section was not initially shared by the other committee members. The Italian committee member, Bernardo Attolico, wanted to appoint a South American, and Eric Drummond had also been against hiring a Spaniard due to Spain's already adequate representation in the Secretariat. The Secretary General eventually agreed to Colban's proposal for practical reasons; the workload in the section was 'daily increasing', and the candidate was 'entirely suitable' in every aspect but nationality. 21 The case shows that while it was the committee's intention to give utmost priority to the newly adopted nationality principle, compromises on this front were inevitable to maintain a well-functioning secretariat.

This was a complicated issue, however. The inherently sensitive nature of 'sovereignty governance' in minority protection required the AC to grant the aspect of nationality additional consideration when hiring to the Minorities section. This first becomes evident in 1922 when Attolico proposed that a South African should be chosen to fill up a vacant post in the Minorities section. Although hiring  a  South  African  was  desirable  from  an  adequate  representation  standpoint,  Colban  was concerned that 'a man of non-European nationality would not be likely to understand the minorities questions or be conversant with them.' 22

This shows Colban's view of how the importance of being familiar with Eastern Europe and their minority groups necessitated a specific national background. In practical terms, this would make it

19 LONA-R1460 - Staff Regulations 1 st Edition, Geneva, 1 June 1922.

20 It was the recently conducted contract with Salvador de Madariaga as Chief of the Disarmament Section which at the time put Spain in the category of adequately represented nations, thus problematizing the appointment of another Spanish member of the Secretariat. (S954-1, Minutes, 10 th AC-Meeting, August 3 rd , 1922).

21 S954-1, Minutes, 11 th AC-Meeting, August 24 th , 1922.

22 S954-1, Minutes, 10 th AC-Meeting, August 3 rd , 1922.

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difficult  to  align  recruitment  to  the  section  with  the  established  principle  of  working  towards adequate national representation in the secretariat. While European candidates were preferable to non-Europeans in the section, this did not actually comprise all European nationals which is evident from the fact that no French, German, Central or Eastern European officials were ever hired to work in the section. It was assumed that a citizen from these countries regardless of individual morals or qualifications would be too personally invested in the matter. 23

Another appointment issue arose in late 1927 when a new director of the Minorities Section had to be appointed following Colban's relocation to the Disarmament Section. During this recruitment process the aspect of nationality was similarly important to how it had been in 1922. An Argentinian delegate was quick to request that an Argentinian should be chosen for the vacant post, a proposal which was unanimously declined by the AC. Not only had progress been made recently to satisfy Argentina's claims for adequate representation in the Secretariat; Drummond was also certain about the dissatisfaction of both governments and minorities in the case of a non-European director. 24 Drummond's suspicion indicates that nationality-preferences were held not only in the AC but also among national governments and minorities.

Returning to the vacant post of director in 1927, the Committee members unanimously agreed to the preferability of appointing a European, though they did not share similar views when it came to the specific European nationality of the candidate. Committee member Joseph Avenol repeatedly expressed that he himself believed personal qualifications of candidates should be deemed of higher importance than nationality, since the AC's task would otherwise be 'considerably complicated'. For  Colban,  who  knew  the  job  from  personal  experience,  there  could  be  no  doubt  about  the importance  of  the  new  director's  nationality.  Drummond  himself  was  likely  also  aware  of  the complicated political role that the directorship entailed which is indicated by his initial selection of possible candidates. These were all citizens of ex-neutral and non-invested countries (three Swedish,

23 Karen Gram-Skjoldager & Haakon A. Ikonomou, 'Making Sense of the League of Nations Secretariat - Historiographical and Conceptual Reflections on Early International Public Administration,' European History Quarterly 49, no. 3 (2019): 420444.

24 S956-1, Minutes, 15 th AC-Meeting, December 16 th , 1927.

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one Swiss, and one Belgian candidate). 25 Just like in 1922, the choice ultimately feel out in favor of a Spaniard when Manuel Aguirre de Cárcer was chosen for the post in 1928. 26

From these two cases of recruitment, it becomes clear that the AC's recruitment considerations were heavily influenced by the aspect of nationality when it concerned the Minorities Section. Although the  Staff  Regulations  of  1922  had  introduced  adequate  national  representation  as  an  important guiding  principle  in  recruitment  other  considerations  were  typically  of  higher  importance  when recruiting to the Minorities section. The biggest challenge was to find candidates from nations who possessed  enough  insights  into  the  delicate  matters  of  minority  populations  in  Eastern  Europe. Therefore, candidates from ex-neutral countries of Western Europe, who weren't politically invested in  the  region  nor  the  scheme,  were preferable  as  opposed  to  other  European  and  non-European candidates.

## The Mandates Section

Unlike  the  Minorities  Section  which  possessed  a  significant  degree  of  autonomy,  the  Mandates Section was not itself charged with any of it. Instead, this section's role was to serve the Permanent Mandates Commission (PMC) in secretarial matters. The PMC was responsible for oversight with the  Mandate  System;  the  administration  by  certain  former  allied  victor  states  over  14  different territories as laid out by Article 22 of the League Covenant (Walters 1952: 56-58). Some of these were  former  colonies  of  the  defeated  Central  Powers  while  others  were  parts  of  now  dissolved empires such as the Ottoman Empire. Essentially the system was an attempt by The Great Powers to align their aspirations for the continuation of empire with 20 th century liberal internationalism. This was done by promising the mandated peoples of an indefinite path towards self-rule and by involving  the  League  machinery.  The  PMC  was  to  examine  annual  report  on  the  mandated territories  sent  in  by  the  mandatory  powers. In addition, a petition system would be established similarly  to  the  one  existing  for  minority  protection  (Mazower  2012:  165-173).  The  Mandates Section's  tasks  included  communication  with  governments  of  mandatory  powers  and  monthly Mandates Section Number of 1st Division Contracts, 1919-1946

25 S956-1, Minutes, 1 st AC-Meeting, January 19 th , 1928.

26 'Manuel Aguirre de Cárcer,' LONSEA, accessed January 25 th , 2023.

19

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023 Italian 21 %

information exchange with the PMC about petitions and the state of the mandated areas overall (Ranshofen-Wertheimer 1945: 116-117).

Portuguese 10,5%

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Women

Men These various tasks assigned to the section were carried out by a small crew that never exceeded 16 officials at any given moment during the League's lifespan. 27 In 1922, the section contained only eight  officials  representing  six  different  countries,  including  three  Members  and  a  Director  of Section. The section appears to have been understaffed in its early years, an interpretation supported by director William Rappard's request to hire a new First Division official in August 1922. 28 This appointment was,  however,  left  unresolved  long  into  1923,  as  the  Committee  struggled  to  find suitable candidates. A factor explicitly contributing to this long delay was the nationality principle of adequate representation. While the Dutchman Rost van Tonningen had been found to possess all the qualifications required for working in the section, the Netherlands had already at the time reached an adequate degree of representation in the Secretariat. Therefore, the Dutch candidate became ineligible for appointment. 29

Fig. 3 Mandates Section. Statistics and Visualizations: Haakon A. Ikonomou, Yuan Chen, Obaida Hanteer, Jonas Tilsted 'Visualizing the League of Nations Secretariat - a Digital Research Tool' (Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen, 2023)

27 'LoN Mandates Section,' LONSEA, accessed May 17 th , 2022, http://www.lonsea.de/pub/org/1208.

28 S954-1, Minutes, 11 th AC-Meeting, August 24 th , 1922.

29 S954-1, Minutes, 21 st AC-Meeting, April 12 th , 1923.

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

It was possibly this long unsuccessful search for qualified candidates of the right nationality which eventually led Rappard and the AC to make a slight compromise. At an AC meeting on the 30 th of May 1923, Rappard stated his provisional decision of appointing the Dane, Finn Tage Blichfeldt Friis, in favor of a Finnish candidate as the new First Division member of the Mandates Section. Rappard stated that while he agreed to the desirability of appointing the Finn from a 'nationality perspective,' he thought the Dane would prove more suitable. To this Drummond replied that if the quality of the two candidates were 'more or less equal' he would ask him to choose the Finn on the grounds of his nationality. 30 Nevertheless, Rappard stuck to his own decision and appointed the Dane in favor of the Finnish candidate. 31 Although it is hard to exactly pinpoint the discrepancy in adequate  representation  between  Denmark  and  Finland  at  the  time,  the  discussion  conveys  the impression that the personal qualifications of the two candidates ended up as the deciding factor, since both Denmark and Finland were adequately represented in the Secretariat overall.

Adequate national representation in the Secretariat was not the only guiding principle related to nationality when hiring to the Mandates Section either. An important nationality-related principle for this section was to not hire citizens from Mandatory Powers to ensure impartiality (RanshofenWertheimer  1945:  116-117).  Evidently,  this  rule  did  not  apply  to  Second  or  Third  Division officials, as both British and French lower officials worked in the section throughout the interwar period. 32 Still, keeping the section 'clean' of First Division members from mandatory powers was not always easy for Drummond and the AC. When the section's Swiss director, William Rappard, resigned from the post in 1924, pressure mounted on Drummond to make compromises on the rule.  Upon  being  promoted  to  Chief  of  Section  the  Italian  Secretariat  official,  Vito  Catastini, demanded the transfer of the Belgian official, Charles Smets, from the Financial Section to assist him in his new position.

Although Drummond was aware of the potential language challenges that Catastini could face in his new role, he did not want to create a precedent for the future that citizens of mandatory powers (such as Belgium) could become higher officials within the section. Instead of complying with the

30 S954-1, Minutes, 22 nd AC-Meeting, May 30 th , 1923.

31 'Finn Tage Blichfeldt Friis,' LONSEA, accessed May 17 th , 2022, http://www.lonsea.de/pub/person/5525.

32 LONSEA, 'LoN Mandates Section'.

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

demand for the transfer of Smets, Drummond was only prepared to consider attaching a French speaking assistant in times of need if the work proved 'too much' for Catastini and his section. 33 The nationality rule to 'safeguard the full impartiality of the staff' was not to be circumvented.

Recruiting only 'eligible' nationals to the section continued to be a matter of complication in the years that followed. When another debate arose in April 1928 about this matter, it was once again stirred by the Italian Chief of Section, Vito Catastini. To fill a vacant post in the Mandates Section, he now proposed to transfer the Swiss official, de Haller, from the Minorities Section. Drummond regarded de Haller as the best option available within the Secretariat but was himself interested in finding a suitable Canadian. From the viewpoint of the Secretary General, a Canadian official would have  the  capability  to  'speak  more  firmly  and  criticize  more  freely  than  could  any  European' regarding Britain's mandated territories.

As pointed out by Catastini, however, choosing a Canadian for the vacant post would bring its own issues. Not only would it cause delay to complete the appointment, as it would take time to find a qualified Canadian; choosing a Canadian would also risk stirring negative public opinion, since it could give the 'impression of an arrangement between different members of the British Empire.' 34 The Italian Chief of Section considered it unnecessary to draw attention to the unspoken fact that the League was essentially a 'League of Empires' with Canada as just one of several territories under the  British  Crown  which  had  been  given  membership  (Pedersen  2017:  113-138).  Appointing  a Canadian  First  Division  member  to  the  Mandates  Section  would de  facto had  been  as  much  a violation of the nationality rule in 1928, as the transfer of the Belgian official to section would four years earlier. In the end, Drummond decided not to circumvent this important nationality principle in recruitment to the Mandates Section and agreed to the transfer of de Haller in favor of his own suggestion of a Canadian.

As can be seen from the above, the hierarchical nature of the Mandate System and the League itself added  further  complexity  to  the  recruitment  of  higher  officials  to  the  Mandates  Section.  Two, separate principles in relation to the citizenship of candidates had to be considered when evaluating

33 S955, Minutes, 7 th AC-Meeting, August 20 th , 1924.

34 S956, Minutes, 4 th AC-Meeting, April 24 th , 1928.

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

candidates.  The  first  pertaining  to  all  sections,  including  the  Mandates  Section,  was  to  favor candidates  from  non-adequately  represented  member  states.  The  second  principle  was  to  not appoint citizens of nations which held power over mandated territories. Aside from these two rules, no specific nationalities appear to have been deemed particularly suited over others to work in the Mandates  Section.  There  is  no  indication  of  European  citizens  being  preferred  ahead  of  nonEuropean citizens, unlike what was the case for the Minorities Section. As noted, Drummond even saw  potential  benefits  of  appointing  a  Canadian  to  Member  of  Section  before  considering  all political implications of this move.

## Conclusion

This article has investigated how nationality constrained recruitment of First Division officials to three, separate sections of the League Secretariat. It can be concluded that despite these section's similarities  in  size  and  policy  fields,  the  aspect  of  nationality  did  not  constrain  recruitment  in  a uniform way across all three sections. Instead, other factors such as the degree of political autonomy given the section influenced to what extend the citizenship of candidates constrained recruitment. For all three sections in question, the primary, nationality-related concern in recruitment was to favor candidates of non-adequately represented member states. Yet for both the Minorities and the Mandates  Section,  the  nature  of  the  minority  protection  scheme  and  the  mandates  system respectively added further nationality-related constrains to the recruitment considerations.

In the Minorities Section, a clear preference was had for Europeans in the First Division as opposed to non-Europeans. This is evident both from the composition of First Division nationals working in the section and from the AC-minutes. It was deemed necessary of candidates to possess significant knowledge about minority groups in Eastern Europe. This effectively made non-European citizens unsuited for the job while also drastically reducing the spectrum of suitable Europeans. The narrow range of appropriate nationalities made it difficult to recruit First Division officials to the section from a suitable nation in regard to the internationalization principle.

For the Mandates Section we find many of the same issues as mentioned for the Minorities section. To  uphold  the  legitimacy  of  the  Mandate  System  it  was  necessary  to  keep  the  section  clear  of

## CULTURE AND HISTORY Nr. 01 Juni 2023

nationals from mandatory powers. This principle also effectively overruled the general principle of improving adequate national representation when recruiting First Division officials to the Mandates Section. Still, the range of suitable nationalities in the Mandates Section was less narrow than what was  the  case  for  the  Minorities  Section,  as  both  Europeans  and  non-Europeans  were  deemed suitable.

For the Disarmament Section, the biggest constrains from a nationality perspective surrounded the directorship of the section. Since the Great Powers did not wish to grant the section much political autonomy, it allowed for nationals of smaller powers to continuously obtain the post of director. In general, the nationality-based constrains on recruitment to the Disarmament Section were much less significant than for the two other sections due to its limited autonomy. The employment of the stateless Ex-Russian, Nokhem Sloutzki, is emblematic of this reality. For Drummond and the AC, the section's marginalized political role provided the benefit of being able to clearly prioritize the improvement of adequate national representation in the overall Secretariat when recruiting to the Disarmament section.

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## Unpublished sources

- LONA-S883 - Personnel File, Nokhem/Nahim Sloutzki
- LONA-S700 - Personal File, Thanassis Aghnides
- S954, Minutes from the Appointments Committee, January 1922 - August 1923; October 1923 - June 1924.
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- LONA-R1460 - Staff Regulations 1 st Edition, Geneva, 1 June 1921.
- LONA-R1460 - Staff Regulations 1 st Edition, Geneva, 1 June 1922.

## Web pages