THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: Misery!

Groping about in what dramatic Dr. Stephen Osusky of Czechoslovakia called "the most stifling fog of pessimism I have ever breathed," statesmen of the League of Nations found it desperately difficult last week to lay hold of any useful plan for dealing with present worldwide Depression.

"The position of at least four of the agricultural exporting countries of Europe is absolutely tragic!" said Rumanian Minister of Commerce Virgil Madgearu. He pictured Rumanian farmers as "crushed" by the stupendous volumes of foodstuffs offered in World markets by North and South America plus Russia. Referring to Russian "dumping" (see p. 17), M. Madgearu seemed to blame this partially on the U. S. "The great Capitalist absentee from League circles," said he with biting asperity, "has shipped 35,000 tractors to the great Communist absentee."

Other Leaguers pointed out that the "World Army of Unemployed" now numbers some 12,000,000, one fifth as many as were under arms during the Great War. Canada's Dr. Walter Riddell suggested darkly that farmers in America, equipped with tractors and loans at the bank, may be worse off than Europe's simple peasantry, not thus supplied. The overseas farmer he said, "being entirely on a price basis, cannot live unless he sells at a profit." Bankrupt, he loses his farm through foreclosure, and this fate, warned Dr. Riddell, befell "some 2,000.000 U. S. farmers after the slump of 1921 and 1922."

Upsetting to statesmen, hours and days of such pessimistic talk had an almost hysterical effect on the leading stateswoman present, Britain's Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, Miss Susan Lawrence. Eagerly she snatched at a swarthy Indian delegate's proposal that the League spend $20,000 on a "scientific study" of Depression. When a thrifty Dutchman objected that "such a sum, in the circumstances, might seem extravagant," Miss Lawrence bounded quivering to her feet.

"We must make this study!" she cried. "We have had here . . . men from every country in the world explaining the misery to which their populations have been reduced by the march of economic events during the past few years, and though we have in front of us the foremost economists of the world has any one of them given us anything like a scientific analysis of the causes which produced this catastrophe? Not one! And has there been any hint of a general remedy proposed? No! We must employ Science to find the remedy."

Amid some grumbling the $20,000 expenditure was approved. "Hmp," growled Italy's Senator Giuseppe de Michelis. "I am willing to approve a Scientific study, but what is the use of it? We all know what has caused Depression: overproduction and underconsumption. We have more wheat, for example, than we can eat. We must seek by research other ways to use wheat than by eating it!"

Judges & Florins. Major work of the League week was to pick from a field of 59 candidates a whole new World Court bench: 15 Judges and four Deputy Judges, all to serve for nine years from Jan. 1, 1931