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
Mammoth ballots were provided on which each country's representative in the Council or Assembly could write down on one sheet the names of his 15 favorite judges. Council and Assembly voted, as usual, in separate halls more than a mile apart. Yet to be elected each of the 15 successful candidates had to obtain a simultaneous majority in both places at once. Theory: if the representatives of the Great Powers (comprising the Council) voted in the same room with representatives of the Nations (sitting in the Assembly) the whales might intimidate the minnows.
On the very first pair of ballots 14 judges were elected by simultaneous majorities--so well do whales and minnows read each others.thoughts. But to elect the 15th judge took seven hours of frantic balloting. It was Chile v. Colombia--a soft-spoken but venomous South American fight, staged wholly behind the scenes.
On the first pair of ballots Chile's erudite Dr. Miguel Cruchaga-Tocornal won in the Council, failed by a single ballot to nose out Colombia's learned Dr. Francisco Urrutia for 15th place on the Assembly's slate. Next the Assembly swung gradually toward a Swede in the course of nine more ballots, then heard that the Council's ballot casters had veered round to the Assembly's original choice, Colombian Dr. Urrutia. In a splashing finish both whales and minnows plopped for him.
Not the most popular candidate, as had been predicted, was Frank Billings Kellogg, sometime U. S. Secretary of State, elected fortnight ago to fill out the unexpired World Court term of Charles Evans Hughes, re-elected last week for a full nine-year term. In order of their popularity, that is in descending order of Assembly votes cast to elect them last week the new World Court judges are:
Judges Votes
1) Japan's Count Mineitciro Adatci, also his country's League Council- man 49
2) Italy's Dionisio Anzilotti,* President of the World Court 40
3) French Henri Fromageot* 40
4) Britain's Sir Cecil Hurst* 40
5) Spain's Rafael Altamira* 38
6) Dutch Jonkheer Willera van Eysinga 38
7) Salvador's Gustave Guerrero. ... 38
8) Belgium's Baron Rolin Jaecquemyns 38
9) Frank Billings Kellogg 35
10) Poland's Count Michel Rostworowski 34
11) Germany's Walther M. H. Schikking 34
12) Rumania's Demetre Negulesco*. . 33
13) China's Wang Chung-hui* 32
14) Cuba's Antonio Sanchez de Bustamante* 31
15) Colombia's Francisco Urrutia
By further vote of the Assembly last week, World Court judges, who are paid in Dutch florins, will receive 45,000 yearly ($18,000) instead of their previous wage of 35,000.
Who Pays? For 1930, according to the budget discussed last week, the league received net contributions of $5,228,377.33.
Though the U. S. is no League State, John Davison Rockefeller Jr. and other U. S. League-lovers have contributed $430,000 from their privy purses. Of League states Great Britain contributed most ($559,712.84); Haiti least ($4,929.57).
*Re-elected.
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