THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: At Geneva

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The Assembly of the League of Nations, in session for the sixth time at Geneva (TIME, Sept. 21), turned and gave ear to Count Quinones de Leon of Spain. By him

A Spanish Resolution was introduced (with the approval of France and the consent of England) praising the efforts of League members to make "regional security treaties," such as the proposed Rhine Pact. Count Quinones' words and resolution were innocuously bland. Specifically he proposed that when regional security pacts had been drawn up by the interested parties the League "should examine them, in order to report to the Seventh [next] Assembly on the progress of security." In essence the intention of the Count was to lay a flower on the grave of the Protocol, (TIME, Sept. 21) which was once to have given the League power to dictate "security" to Europe.

For a moment the resolution seemed upon the point of passing; the vexed question of "disarmament" was to be shelved again. Then up rose Count Apponyi, that lean Hungarian statesman, a grand seigneur of legend, whose pointed white beard, flaring Roman nostrils, and face of parchment, give him, when he is solemn, the air of an exiled patriarch, and, when he laughs, that of a goat. He swept the conclave with proud and sombre eyes. Twisting a little paper in his hand he began to speak.

With an unexpectedness that was as unnerving as a thunderclap he twisted the tail of Senor Quinones' butterfly resolution into a hornet's sting; proposed an amendment that would give the League power to make "regional compacts" binding on the whole world, with a force as rigid as that once contemplated in drawing up the Protocol.

The assembly gasped. Dean of mid-European statesmen that he is, the aged Count Apponyi fired home an address in support of his measure that was calculated to leave not a mind unpersuaded. The assembly rose to its feet and cheered. Then it suddenly sat down and realized it had made a faux pas. Throughout the rest of the week the mills of Britannia slowly ground Count Apponyi's resolution to nothingness. The hour for "putting teeth into the League" was not yet.

Its moment of drama past, the assemblage proceeded as follows:

Economic Conference. M. Louis Toucheur, last year a champion of the Protocol, introduced a resolution calling upon the League to call a conference which should investigate and attempt to mitigate economic factors making for war. It will be debated and passed upon later.

A Conciliation Court resolution, introduced by the Danes, and pro- viding for the establishment of an auxiliary to the World Court, through whose hands all disputes between nations would have to pass, was knocked on the head by the British, Brazilians, Dutch and French.