COLLEGE

LIBRARY

THE JOURNAL

OF

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

(Continuing THE JOURNAL OF RACE DEVELOPMENT)

Vol. 12

JULY, 1921

No. 1

THE RECORD OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

By Charles H. Levermore, Ph.D., Secretary of the New York Peace Society

Some of our Solons at Washington have assured us that the League of Nations is dead, and the editorial chorus has, here and there, repeated the saying with an air of finality. Some people seem to suppose that the sun shines only where they stand, and therefore they may conclude that, if Uncle Sam is not under the big tent, there cannot be any circus. Such delusions need the remedial application of the light of fact. The story of what the League of Nations has actually accomplished within a year and a half carries with it sufficient evidence that the League is not dead, nor even sleeping.

1. The first action, under the covenant was the creation of the secretariat, which took place during the organization period, May 5, 1919-January 16, 1920.

The secretary-general, Sir James Eric Drummond, had been for twenty years a distinguished member of the staff of the British Foreign Office and secretary to Messrs. Asquith, and Balfour and Sir Edward Grey. He gradually assembled around him a group of colleagues now about two hundred in number, representing a score of different nations, and classified according to their specialties in a dozen bureaus.

The chiefs of these bureaus are all men of acknowledged eminence in their own countries, experts in law, diplomacy, finance and economics, journalism, sanitation, and the various forms of administration.

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THE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, VOL. 12, No. 1,

JULY, 1921

Never before this has the civilized world possessed such a cabinet, ministers of the public welfare, commissioned by forty-eight nations to devote all their abilities and energies, individually and collectively, to the reconstruction of society and to the prevention of war.

Sir Eric Drummond and his associates are, in a vital sense, an administrative staff. They are not to be so much considered as statesmen or diplomatists, although they possess the qualities that belong to such men, but as administrators of international affairs.

In their hands are being centered the wires leading to the more than fifty public international associations and to the more than four hundred and fifty private international associations which, before the war, were gathered up into the "Office Centrale des Institutions Internationales" at Brussels. Also all the great technical commissions formed by the League are linked to the secretariat, where their secretarial work is performed under the authority of the secretary-general.

At the time of the recent assembly of the League the secretariat was organized to work through ten bureaus or sections, as follows:

1. Political. The Bureau of Correspondence between the League and the various governments.

2. Legal. A staff of expert authorities on treaties and conventions and international laws, the legal advisers of the secretary-general, the Council and any of the League Commissions.

3. Economic and Financial. The administrative source of financial conferences, and a bureau of information and secretarial direction for many organs and commissions of the League.

4. Administrative Commissions. The link between the League and its commissions with governmental powers, and between the League and such bodies as the Reparation Commission.j

5. Communications and Transit. Charged with an important reconstructive work; the administrative source of the Barcelona Conference in March, 1921.

6. Information. The Publicity Bureau, charged also with the publication of the official journal of the League and the special supplements of information.

7. Mandates. The link with the Mandatory Commission and consequently with one of the most important responsibilities of the Supreme Council of the Allies.

8. International Bureaus. Already described.

9. Registry of Treaties. About seventy have already been registered and published, a practical form of "open diplomacy.

10. International Health and Social Questions. The link between the League and the many bodies engaged in fighting disease, famine and vice.

Through all this mechanism the secretariat gathers information and prepares it for use, drafts reports, makes recommendations and programs for the council and assembly, and keeps in touch with all commissions, conferences and officials of the League.

Within the secretariat are also six departments of internal administration, viz., registry, finance, establishment, library, interpreting and translating, précis writing, whose duties are sufficiently indicated by these titles.

No one can examine the great number of valuable documents printed in connection with the assembly sessions, the daily Journal, the verbatim reports of the debates in the Assembly and the record of proceedings in the assembly committees, without paying tribute to the industry, farreaching intelligence and great authority with which this central office of the League, i.e., of the organized world, acts and speaks.

II. The second achievement of the League was the creation of the International Labor Organization and Labor Bureau at Washington in November, 1919. This is an outcome of the treaty but not of the covenant. It is however, an integral part of the League of Nations, formed by the same membership with precisely similar organs, dealing with its membership through the secretariat, and dependent for its funds upon the vote of the assembly.

The Labor Bureau is housed in the League of Nations building at Geneva. During its life of eighteen months, it has held three international conferences, and drafted what may be called the first form of an international labor code, bearing especially upon the length of the labor day on both land and sea, on the protection of laborers in dangerous occupations, and on the terms of labor for women and children. These proposed statutes are now before the parliaments of nations that are members of the League.

The Labor Bureau or Office, of which Albert Thomas of France is director-general, not only through its conferences but also through its voluminous publications is a central clearing house for all questions involving the obligations and interests of labor in all countries. It is noteworthy that the first conference of this branch of the League of Nations is the one world-congress that has, as yet, opened its doors to delegates from Germany, an interesting evidence of a strong sense of international unity.

The Labor Office at Geneva is linked with a national bureau in each important member state. These agencies cooperate in gathering, studying and publishing information concerning productions and distribution in all countries, with special reference to labor-time, wages, conditions and cost of living. Although the United States is not a member of the Labor Organization, there is a Washington bureau of the Labor Office, at the head of which is Ernest Greenwood.

III. The third achievement of the League of Nations is comprised in the record of the activities of the council of the League. This council is practically an executive committee of the world in the League, having a well defined sphere of duty created for it by the covenant and the peace treaties. Between January 16, 1920 and the date of this writing, the council has held twelve sessions.

It must be sharply distinguished from the Supreme Council of the Allies, which is not an organ of the League but which is the chief political force in Europe outside of Russia, and which is the body which deals primarily with the unextinguished flames of the great war.