Largest Conference

At Geneva met the representatives of 42 nations to propose, discuss, pass or reject resolutions framed to control the international traffic in arms and other munitions of war.

So important is the conference held that the U. S., Britain, France and Italy sent nine delegates apiece while Germany, whose arms-trading facilities were rigorously denied in the Treaty of Versailles, sent no fewer than seven. The entire personnel of the conference filled the League Palace to the exclusion of the public, made it the largest conference ever held under the League's aegis and the largest conference, after the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, ever to be held in the whole course of known history.

This vast assembly, presided over by M. Carton de Wiart, onetime (1920) Belgian Premier, turned to business.

Representative Theodore E. Burton of Ohio, one of the oldest men in Congress (TIME, Apr. 21, 1924, IMMIGRATION) and Temporary Chairman of the Republican National Convention that nominated President Coolidge, arrived at the head of the U. S. delegation.