Tardy Nations

A disgrace to European statecraft was the final adjournment in Geneva last week of the three-year-old League of Nations conference to promote a general European tariff truce (TIME, Sept. 30, 1929).

Of the 23 States represented only 13 ever ratified the terms of the truce they drew up and signed, a truce which would have greatly stimulated inter-European exports--to the disadvantage of U. S. exports to Europe.

After three years of most ignoble bickering the truce, originally proposed by Britain and advocated by France, had to be dropped because France has not ratified it and Britain has found that her Dominions disapprove.

Apropos, last week Sir Eric Drummond, Secretary General of the League, asked the Hoover Administration whether the U. S. intends or does not intend ever to ratify:

1) The Convention for Supervision of Traffic in Arms; 2) the Protocol Forbidding Gas and Bacteriological Warfare, both signed by the U. S. June 17, 1925; 3) the Convention for Suppression of Counterfeiting Currency, signed by the U. S. April 20, 1929.

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