Crushing Verdict

Statesmen of the League Assembly filed with awful dignity last week into the flimsy hall put up by the City of Geneva for the Disarmament Conference (TIME, March 14, 1932). Sitting down at cheap pine desks, they prepared to make Imperial Japan such an outcast as no Great Power has ever been made before. In the Assembly lobby only Hugh S. Gibson, tall, sleek U. S. Ambassador to Belgium, was seen to smile at and briefly chat with small, tense Japanese Chief Delegate Yosuke Matsuoka, a diplomatic Napoleon who knew he stood at Waterloo.

Because Geneva hoped and believed that Washington will back up the League, Assemblymen looked askance at Chatter Gibson. Unruffled, he strode to a group of seats just outside the Assembly's pale on which sat assorted U. S. and Russian diplomats, the latter headed by Soviet Minister to Finland Boris Stein. No Foreign Minister of a Great Power was present except France's debonair Maitre Paul-Boncour. Few Assemblymen even wore frock coats. This was to be a little fellows' day, although Britain, France, Germany and Italy stood ready to back up at last the small states who are usually more Leagophile than the League.

Proceedings were opened by Belgium's fluffy-haired Paul Hymans as President of the Assembly. It must vote, he said, on the recommendations of the League Committee of 19 (TIME, Feb. 27), recommendations which include withdrawal of Japanese troops from territory they have seized and nonrecognition by League countries of Japan's puppet state, "Manchukuo." Before a vote was taken Chinese Chief Delegate Dr. W. W. Yen accepted the recommendations with gusto, heard Japan's Matsuoka reject them with fierce eloquence: ''Manchuria belongs to us by right! Read your history. We recovered it from Russia! We made it what it is today!" Suddenly and significantly up popped Foreign Minister Dr. Zaunius of Lithuania.

Let the League remember, urged Dr. Zaunius, how, after Vilna was seized from Lithuania by Polish General Zeligowski in 1920, the League tried boldly at first to secure justice, then let the matter drop. Poland still holds Vilna. Twelve years hence will Japanese troops still hold Manchuria?

42 to 1. The vote, taken alphabetically in French, began with a clerk's piping cry "Union Sud-Africaine !" and the gruff reply from that British dominion "Oui."

Straight down the list every nation then answered either "oui" or "yes" until Mr. Matsuoka barked his sharp "No!"

After that nothing but approving votes were heard until Siam's Assemblyman softly murmured "Abstain."* Other abstainees who either sent no Assemblyman or simply did not vote totaled 13: Abyssinia, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Honduras, Irak, Liberia, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Salvador. Gravely President Hymans read out the final count: 42 to 1--hailed in Geneva as "The World against Japan!" Ruling that the Committee of 19's recommendations had been adopted "unanimously,"* Mr. Hymans called Japan a land "which seems desirous of retiring into isolation and carrying on its policy without taking into account the opinion of other nations." Knowing that while he spoke a new Japanese offensive was crashing against Jehol, President Hymans added, "We still hope the day will come when our offer will be accepted by both parties and that neither of them will commit any irreparable act. . . . The League of Nations is working and will continue to work [for] the peace of the world."

Exit Japan. In loud, decisive tones Yosuke Matsuoka read to the League Assembly milder words from Tokyo than had been expected. He implied rather than announced Japanese withdrawal from the League. "The Japanese Government are obliged," he read, "to feel that they have now reached the limit of their endeavors to cooperate with the League regarding the Chino-Japanese differences."

Stepping down from the Tribune, Japan's Matsuoka beckoned imperiously to the rest of his delegation, some members of which were known to oppose a dramatic exit. Obediently but rather slowly they rose, followed their Chief who marched firmly from the hall. In the lobbies, in the cloak room no non-Japanese spoke to Pariah Matsuoka. Impassive, he clipped a cigar, struck a match, puffed air mechanically, threw away the match, walked out unconscious that his cigar had failed to light. Cameras clicked. Cinemachines whirred. Up swept a bright limousine with the flag of the rising sun streaming from its radiator cap. Stepping in, with the cold cigar still clenched between his teeth, Japan's Matsuoka was whisked to his hotel, consoled his crestfallen staff that night with a champagne supper. His next duty, having defied the world, was to report home.

Roosevelt & Stalin. Meanwhile the Assembly's day was less than half over. After lunch President Hymans cut short an attempt by former Chinese Premier Dr. V. K. Wellington Koo to make a gloating speech. Getting down to business, the Assembly enlarged its Committee of 19 by adding Canada and the Netherlands, instructed the Committee of 21 thus formed to "aid members of the League in concerting their action and their attitude among themselves and with nonmember States. . . . The Committee will invite the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union to take part in its work."

In that invitation lies the crux of the whole matter. Unless Washington or Moscow (preferably both) cooperates with League States not only in words but in actions designed to make Japan mind the League, there is every likelihood that Manchuria will become a second Vilna.

As the Assembly rose and dispersed (it did not technically adjourn last week), the Committee of 21 queried Washington by cable and Moscow through Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov who was just leaving Geneva for home. "I must consult my Government," said Comrade Litvinov, indicating that Moscow might not reply to the League until after Franklin Delano Roosevelt is president.

Meanwhile the League's invitation reached the U. S. State Department in time to interrupt a friendly conference between outgoing Statesman Stimson and incoming Statesman Hull. Because the League asked a reply as soon as possible, the State Department obliged promptly with something which "did not sound as if it had been written by Mr. Stimson" according to officials of Japan's Foreign Office next day. Possibly written in part by Mr. Hull (though signed by Mr. Stimson) the State Department's cautious reply expressed "substantial accord" with the League's version of facts in Manchuria, "general accord'' with the conclusions of the Assembly as to what should be done and "general indorsement of the principles thus recommended."

The "Hull Reply," if such it was, ignored the League's request for assurance that the U. S. "will if necessary concert their action and their attitude with the members of the League." Two days later the State Department released a 100% Stimson communique saying that the Hoover administration will cooperate with the League Committee of 21 which, it was emphasized, is merely an advisory committee.

At meetings of this Committee in Geneva, meanwhile, France, Italy and Czechoslovakia had opposed as "premature" a backhanded suggestion by British Captain Anthony Eden that each Committeeman say whether his Government thought the problem of exportation of arms had yet been raised by events in the Far East. In other words: "How about declaring an arms embargo against Japan or China or both?" Excitedly in London the Chinese Legation at once protested that the Great Powers would be helping Japan if they declared an embargo against both countries, since Japan is already so much better armed than China.

Amid tense excitement the British House of Commons met to hear Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon, many times a defender of Japan at Geneva, state the embargo policy of his Majesty's Government. "If the supply of arms is to be stopped," said Sir John, "it can only be done by international agreement. . . . Existing contracts must be respected, but subject to this, the Government has decided, as from today, pending international consultation such as I hope for, the Government will not authorize nor issue licenses for the export either to China or Japan of [arms]. . . . The action of the Japanese Army does not in the least resemble the invasion by a foreign force of another country. Japan has exceptional rights to certain strips of territory."

Thus British munitions makers will be permitted to fill all the orders they had received up to last week from China and Japan, while at the same time His Majesty's Government receives credit in newspaper headlines for declaring a "temporary embargo." Not without reason is Sir John Simon hailed as the greatest and highest paid British lawyer of the age. Paris dispatches reported that the French Government would take the same stand as the British.

Up to last week the U. S. continued with Britain and France to be a major exporter of war materials to China, Japan, Colombia, Peru, etc.--Congress having refused President Hoover the authority he has asked to declare arms embargoes.

Significance. Japan, barring collapse of her Government, retains power to abstain from and thereby hamstring both the coming World Economic Conference on which so much hope is pinned and the World Disarmament Conference, now bogged down among committees which haggle endlessly at Geneva.

The Great Powers face stupendous obstacles (Chinese as well as Japanese) to any effort to bring peace & order into the Far East. On the other hand, as Genevans pointed out last week, the Assembly's action is a potent fact. "It is," cried China's exultant Chief Delegate Dr. W. W. Yen, "a verdict of Guilty against the misguided leaders of Japan. ... It is a crushing but fair verdict, a terrible but just indictment."

Quitting Geneva amid a few Japanese shouts of Banzai! ("May You Live 10,000 Years!") Japanese Chief Delegate Matsuoka sped by train to Paris, arrived there unable to make up his mind last week whether he ought to cross the Atlantic and "explain everything" to President Roosevelt or sail from Marseilles for Japan via the Suez Canal.

"When you come to think of it," said Mr. Matsuoka artfully to U. S. correspondents in Paris, "you must be convinced that the League committed an awful act. . . . The League is now making an attempt to elevate itself to the status of a superState. Is the world at this stage of progress really prepared to accept it? Are the Americans prepared to accept? Why, you aren't even prepared to join it!"

Momentarily the Imperial Japanese Government were expected to file notice of Japanese withdrawal from the League, but such withdrawal would not be effective for two years.

*When Siamese King Prajadhipok journeyed to the U. S. to have a cataract scraped from his eyes he was sumptuously feted en route by Japanese Emperor Hirohito (TIME, April 20, 1931).

*Since Japan and China were parties to the dispute their votes, though asked for and counted, were of no effect.

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