"De Native Scum. . . "

Work done in Geneva by the Council of the League of Nations last week:

P: Publicly rebuked Poland for oppressing her "German minority," privately accepted assurances that the Governor of Upper Silesia (responsible for much oppression) will be removed, although a friend of Polish Dictator Pilsudski.

P: Set Tuesday, Feb. 2, 1932 as the date on which the so-called "World Disarmament Conference" will meet under League auspices in Geneva.

P: Sounded Washington with proposals that a U. S. citizen chairman the 1932 Conference. Germany's representative proposed the U. S. diplomat supposed to be President Hoover's favorite: Ambassador Hugh Simons Gibson. The Irish Free State, seconded by Norway and Sweden, proposed Ambassador Charles Gates Dawes. Other names frequently mentioned: Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Senator Dwight Whitney Morrow. But the reaction of Washington to both proposals last week was negative, and the League left the chairmanship open. The French continued to boom Edouard Benes, Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia. In London during the week Ambassador Dawes (lawyer by trade) attended the trial of a murderer, was present when the prisoner fainted dead away on being sentenced to Death.

P: Received a dressing-down administered by Liberian Representative Dr. Antoine Sottile (Italian-born).

A League commission had just reported that slaves impressed in Liberia are sent to the French and Spanish colonies (TIME, Jan. 19). "When the great powers represented at this table," sneered Dr. Sottile, "have as much courage as Liberia and invite international commissions to investigate and report on abuses existing in their own countries, then the League will have accomplished the purposes for which it was founded!"

No such move was made last week. As to the proposal that an international commission be sent to stamp out slavery in Liberia, Dr. Sottile observed:

"You should also send a finance commission to investigate! You'll find that we haven't only human slavery but financial slavery as well!"

Although he did not name the country to which Liberia is "financially enslaved" every European assumed that the U. S. was meant.

The London Times took time out to recall that so long ago as 1898 Hilaire Belloc penned these lines,* supposed to have been uttered by a fictitious U. S.-born, blackskinned Liberian Lord Chief Justice:

In dealing wid de native scum

Yo' cannot pick an' choose:

Yo' hab to promise um a sum

Ob wages paid in cloth and rum,

But Lordy! dat's a ruse!

Yo' get yo' well on de adventure,

And change de wages to Indenture.

*In The Modern Traveller.

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