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(ii) Can Disarmament come to be regarded by all the Governments as immediately the big thing to tackle? (iii) "¡ill the "Tariff Truce" become a reality before April the first, 1931, or is it to remain a dream ? (iv) Is the Secretariat of the League to be quite frankly on a National or on an Inter- national basis? In other words, is the attempt to form an Inter- national Civil Service to be abandoned and Lord Balfour's famous formula to be scrapped? In a sense this is the real crisis of the Eleventh Assembly, and the decision will have a profound effect upon what has been described as "the most promising experience of modern times." At the moment of writing the first is the only question which has found a definite answer. M. Briand laid his French plan for a European Federation with a Council and a Secretariat of its own before the representatives of the 27 European governments meeting in secret ses- sion. It was rejected by the government repre- sentatives. They did more. They persuaded M. Briand himself to act as their spokesman before the Assembly and to speak to a resolution which made of the European Federation not a sister but a daughter of the League. M. Briand once again proved that he must be the best impromptu speaker that ever was, but the master was far from being the consummate orator of other Assemblies. On the same day he was followed by Mr. A. Henderson. Undistinguished in phrase and monotone-like in deliverance, the British effort was sound and solid. Mr. Henderson gave the im- pression of a man whc knew where he was going and was not easily to be diverted from his path. Very deliberately he announced that the Treaty for Financial Assistance and, indeed, any amend- ments to the Covenant, would be accepted by the British Government on one condition only that a general treaty for the reduction and limitation of armaments was carried through. In his clear, unequivocal emphasis on the urgency of Disarma- ment he was joined later by the Italian delegate and by Dr. Julius Curtius, the German Foreign Secretary, whose task was made rather delicate by the "Fascist victory" at the German General Election. Mr. William Graham, without a note, gave a first-rate lecture to the delegates on the economic aspect of the world situation. He talked to them as if they were stud- ents in a class room; he told them how serious was the game of economic nationalism, and hinted, so it seemed, to the people who love "to read between the lines," that unless a "Tariff Truce" was possible England would turn Protectionist Of the two or three outstanding speeches of the debate one was certainly that of the old and very eminent Italian jurist, Professor Vittorio Scialoja, the chief Italian delegate, after the sudden and mysterious departure of Signor Grandi. It was abominably delivered. Professor Scialoja bent his head over sheets of paper from which he read. Once he made a complete halt in the whole proceedings to fill a glass with water and to drink it; and once he deliberately turned his back on his audience to whisper a few words to M. Titulescu in high and sincere praise of Sir Eric Drummond. But the speech, for the most part, was a masterpiece of ordered thinking. It put, inter alia, the Italian case for the reform" of the Secretariat, and in this passage Professor Scialoja was obviously talking to a brief. According to the Italians there is and there can be no such thing as an "International Civil Service," inasmuch as the League is not a Super-state. And if the Italians get their way the Secretariat will be an institution to which the various governments will "loan" officials for a certain period, and in which the Secretary- General will be the presiding officer of a Com- mittee of Under-Secretaries-General! Nothing has yet been decided on the Secretariat question it must first be debated in the Fourth Committee. And the interesting work of the six big committees is about to begin. In the first Committee they will be dealing with legal ques- tions; in the second with such subjects as Euro- pean Customs Unions; in the third with Disarma- ment (our representative on the Third Committee is Viscount Cecil) in the fourth with the Budget and internal questions in the fifth with the tangle in opium and other social matters; and in the sixth, for ihe first time as a regular item on the agenda, the burning topic of National Minorities. The Germans will lead the attack and M. Briand will be "the Counsel" for the defence. Some of the rooms of the Secretariat building are just now crowded to suffocation, with at intervals the Lobby a seething mass of people, great and small, from all parts of the world. It is a privilege to be in the thick of it. Wales was in evidence at Geneva in the Eleventh Assembly. I was glad to see a splendid display in the bookshops of "The Problem of the Twentieth Century," knowing something of the years of thought and the consistent hard work which Mr. David Davies has given to the study of his theme and the writing of his book. Mr. David Davies himself was in constant attendance at the sessions of the Assembly, and so was Professor C. K. Webster. The five boys from the Secondary Schools who came out as our 1930 "Geneva scholars" had a rare experience. They