Fruitful Adjournment

The Assembly of the League of Nations adjourned last week after a momentous session lasting 20 days (TIME, Sept. 6 et seq.) during which Germany was admitted to the League, the question of permanent League Council seats was adjusted, and the Locarno Pacts were finally rendered operative by the deposit of their ratifications with the League Secretariat.

Final developments on the eve of adjournment:

Chinese Defy. The wily and irrepressible Chinese representative on the Council of the League, Chu Chao-hsin again* exploded a bombshell of anti-British propaganda at Geneva. Meek-eyed, expressionless, he requested the floor for four minutes. While many a delegate yawned, he announced that he would present to the League a copy of the Ku Chin Tu Shu Chi Cheng. This he explained is the Chinese Encyclopaedia, in 800 volumes, containing 800,000 pages, and requiring for storage purposes nine large bookcases.

Having astonished the delegates into attention, Mr. Chu cried with devastating suddenness:

"Recently several British merchant ships sailed up the Yangtze River at full speed, swamping a number of native boats, drowning more than 100 passengers, soldiers and military officers and destroying much merchandise.

"When the authorities sought to make inquiry a British cruiser appeared and interfered. It threatened the villagers on both shores with cannon. The Chinese authorities were obliged to detain the British merchant vessels, taking the matter up with the British Consul at Chungking.

"Unfortunately, before the matter was settled, British cruisers arrived a Wanhsien, and opened fire on the town, destroying a thousand houses, killing a thousand civilians and a hundred gendarmerie. Other cruisers appeared, training guns on Wanhsien. The Chinese returned the fire in self-defense.

"Instructions had been given the local authorities to settle the matter peaceably if possible, but the incident has assumed international importance, threatening the peace of the Far East. Consequently I am making the facts known to the Assembly.

"China does not want to start a war. If others want war with us just let them start it. In the end we will win, for China is weary of being treated as an inferior nation." Since this version of the affair differs completely from Occidental news despatches (TIME, Sept. 20) representing the Chinese as having been the aggressors at Wanhsien, Mr. Chu's charges roused the British representative, Lord Cecil, to empurpled fury.

Controlling himself, Viscount Cecil rapped out that from what he knew of the incident at Wanhsien it was "not at all as described by Mr. Chu."

Conferences Scheduled. The Assembly voted to call an economic and a disarmament conference in 1927 upon dates as yet undetermined.

Christians Rescued. Mrs. Karen Jeppe, able chief of the Syrian League Commission for the rescue of Christian Women in Syria, read a cheering report before the Assembly. Said she: "We have rescued from Arabian harems 1,400 Christian women within four years. . . . Our chief difficulty has been with the women themselves who are usually well treated by their masters, and seem to prefer a life of luxury and laziness to the work we are able to offer them in Christian surroundings. . . . They are mostly Armenian girls sold into harems when mere children, often by their avaricious parents. . . . We have found that the best way of reaching them in the closely guarded harems is through washerwomen who have free access to all parts of the women's quarters. . . . We have funds on hand to last until 1927, by which time we hope that our rescue work will have been practically completed."

"Buy Peace!" Foreign Minister Holsti of Finland proposed a novel scheme for the maintenance of international concord. Said he: "Let us buy peace! Let League member states pledge themselves to grant unlimited credits to any nation attacked and to withhold all credit from the aggressor."

Though several delegates expressed approval, the plan was tabled last week.

Bristol. As it must to all dogs, Death came last week to Bristol, the shaggy St. Bernard who for seven years has guarded the portals of the League of Nations. No dog of our generation was more famous, few were more beloved, none had been patted upon the head so many times by world-potent statesmen.

*Mr. Chu declared vehemently before the eighth session of the League Opium Commission (TIME, June 14) : "If you can find a single man in China in whose breast there does not beat anti-British feeling, he is not a Chinese!"