Minus a Member

In September 1934 the U. S. S. R., long considered an outcast by other powers, was voted into membership of the League of Nations, and its delegate and Foreign Commissar, Maxim Litvinoff, was duly seated. At that time, and later, the Geneva platform was used as an international sounding board for Comrade Litvinoff's clean-cut, often stirring theses--against aggression, for the rights of small nations, on the immorality of war.

Foreign Commissar Litvinoff's most eloquent, emphatic statement on international morals was made in his maiden speech: We are faced now with the task of preventing war. ... At the same time we must grasp the undoubted truth that . . . not a single more or less important war can be localized. . . . We must also tell ourselves that any war sooner or later will bring distress to all countries, both to the combatants and the nonparticipants.

Comrade Litvinoff's sole known duty today is to attend Supreme Soviet sessions, where he usually hears his heavy-tongued successor, Viacheslav Molotov. take a different tack. Meanwhile, Joseph Stalin's "Government of toilers," certainly "without declaring war" and surely "without a shadow of cause of justification," has, indeed, made war against Finland. And as last week the League met to do something about it, another Soviet delegate, Jacob Z. Suritz, also Ambassador to France, delivered no such ringing anti-aggression exhortations as used to be expected from Maxim Litvinoff.

Comrade Suritz is a seasoned Soviet diplomat. He once headed a Soviet mission to Afghanistan, where he greased Afghan palms so well that that mountainous kingdom came to lean toward the Soviet Union more than toward Great Britain. Later he laid the foundation for a long Turkish-Russian friendship, and still later, Jew though he is, he became the Soviet Ambassador to the Jew-baiting Nazis. Adolf Hitler treated him with all honor, however, and modified the famed anti-Semitic Nuernberg laws so that the Ambassador could keep Aryan scrub women and maids under 45 years old in his Embassy.

"Ultimatum." But Delegate Suritz is withal no great orator, and when the ghost of collective security walked the cold halls of the vast Palace of Peace at Geneva last week, he stayed at his hotel. Finnish Delegate Rudolf Holsti called upon the League to give Finland "all practical support possible," shouted: "Give us back peace!" Argentine Delegate Rodolfo Freyre, glowing with anti-Soviet hatred, was the spokesman for those who demanded that the Soviet Union be read out of the League. Swedish Delegate Bo Osten Unden moved that a telegram--virtually an ultimatum--be sent to Moscow asking that the Red Army be halted and that the Finnish-Russian dispute be mediated. Britain's Richard Austen Butler asked and got a time limit of 24 hours for the Soviet Union to reply.

The motion carried, the telegram was dispatched. The 24 hours elapsed, and not only did Delegate Suritz say nothing, but Foreign Commissar Molotov, in a short and pointed message, refused to discuss the matter. The Soviet Union's position, as outlined three weeks ago, was that the Kremlin was really at peace with the "Finnish Democratic Republic," a puppet government organized and recognized only by Russia. And at this point there came a brave ring of courage from this rump League of Nations, now composed of only 42 nations as against the 60-odd that once belonged. Bold speeches were made against Soviet aggression, especially from those far removed from the Russian border. Action came, too, when the League Assembly passed a resolution which; 1) "solemnly condemns the action taken by the U. S. S. R. against the State of Finland"; 2) "urgently appeals to every member of the League to provide Finland, with such material and humanitarian assistance as may be within its power"; 3) "recommends that the [League] Council pronounce upon the question."

Expulsion. The Council took up the matter and immediately found that "by its act the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics has placed itself outside the League of Nations. It follows that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is no longer a member of the League." And so for the first time in its history the League had expelled one of its members.

To obtain the necessary "unanimous" vote condemning Soviet Russia in the Assembly, although unanimous notes are not necessarily there, President Carl J. Hambro, also Speaker of Norway's Storting (Parliament), tried an old parliamentary trick. He simply acked all those in favor of the resolution to remain seated. No delegate was brave enough to rise and declare he was for the Soviet Union. In the Council, the League executive organ, where one negative vote means defeat of a measure, those voting for Russia's ouster were France, Great Britain, Bolivia, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, the Union of South Africa and Egypt. Significantly, those abstaining were Greece and Yugoslavia, who felt they were a bit too near the Soviet Union for comfort; Finland, which decided not to be both plaintiff and judge, and China, which depends on Soviet Russian supplies for its war against Japan.

For Finland, the League thus did more than was ever done for Greece (in the Corfu dispute), China, Ethiopia, Spain, Austria, Czecho-Slovakia or Poland. The League's Secretariat was set to work to coordinate and classify Finland's more pressing needs, and the prospects seemed good that at least some nations would send supplies. France let it be known that she could send some old artillery. Britain thought she could spare a few more planes.

British Delegate Butler and French

Delegate Joseph Paul-Boncour, white-haired veteran of many a League session, did not let the occasion slip by without reminding the world that there were other aggressions and other aggressors. M. Paul-Boncour said that France and Britain were today fighting to "defend the very principle on which the League was founded," that they were indeed at war with the chief "author of European aggression"--Adolf Hitler. The Finns welcomed the moral support, but pressed for greater assurances of more material aid. In Moscow the British and French League speeches were described in the Soviet press as having "exceeded all previous limits of cynicism and hypocrisy."

Why the League finally got its back up could be partially explained by the fact that the expulsion was proposed and engineered primarily by those Latin American, Catholic nations to which everything that the Soviet Union stands for has long been anathema. World-wide sympathy for Finland was important, but not more so than the deep-seated hatred harbored by capitalist countries for the land of Communism. Moreover, with Germany, Italy and Japan out, the League has become more & more a unilateral organization headed by France and Britain and composed of neutrals dependent upon British and French good will. A many-sided League never did agree on any forceful action: a one-sided League last week did.

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