A Busy Week

The League of Nations completed much business during the week. In a single day:

1) The Memel Convention was signed between Lithuania and the Powers. The Memel dispute involved the former East Prussian port of Memel and the mouth of the Niemen River, full control over which was sought by the Lithuanian Republic. Norman H. Davis, Manhattan publicist, acting as special agent of the League, provided the settlement. Lithuania gets Memel. Traffic on the river, which serves the commerce of Germany, Poland and Russia, is to be free. The Lithuanians pretended to object. Poland did object. Russia barked.

2) The Little Entente was induced to sign the protocols for a Hungarian loan, clearing the way for eco-nomic restoration of Hungary.

3) The Poles and Germans were induced to agree to arbitrate any insuperable differences over the fate of the 200,000 Germans in Polish territory.

4) A frontier dispute, affecting the region of Joworzino (in the Carpathian Mountains), was settled between Czecho-Slovakia and Rumania.

5) Poland was assigned a munitions dump at the Free Port of Danzig.

6) Hungary, Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania and Yugo-Slavia were induced to sign agreements looking to the restoration of economic life in Central Europe.

7) The Secretariat was instructed to collect suggestions for extending the principles of the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference.

Other business handled by the League machinery last week included:

Austria. Austria was reprimanded for attempting to get rid of League control. She was told that the terms of her loan, providing for budget control, must be carried out until her finances were finally stable.

Opium. The Council confirmed the authority of the Preparatory Committee, of which the U. S. is a member, to draft the guiding principles for the first of two international conferences on opium to be held next November, with the object of limiting opium consumption in the Far East, China, India, Japan, Portugal, Siam, Belgium, Italy. Opposition to limitation of production came from

India, but the British delegate, Sir John Jordan, showed willingness to cooperate by moving that the Committee be authorized to extend its drafting powers to a preliminary conference restricted to countries having Far Eastern possessions.

Albania. The Council voted 50,000 Swiss francs to relieve the famine in Northern Albania.

Child Welfare. Article 24 of the Covenant, pledging the League to Child Welfare work, was invoked by putting under the Secretariat the work of the International Bureau for the Preservation of Child Welfare at Brussels.

Corfu. On a question involving a major power, the Council of the League was noncommittal. It did not, in the slightest degree, condemn Italy for the Corfu business. (Last September Mussolini bombarded Corfu in retaliation for the assasination of Italian officers in Albania, due, he said, to the negligence of the Greeks. He refused interference by the League. Did he thereby violate the Covenant of the League? The Council of the League, in order to keep Italy's friendship, now says he did not.)

Georgia. The Caucasus Republic of Georgia requested League intervention to induce Soviet Russia to evacuate Georgia.