Sugar Plum

From a chamber of commerce standpoint no convention sugar plum is sweeter than the League of Nations. It never quite adjourns. The Permanent Secretariat teems constantly with women & young women directed by a few males. Several times a year there are big convention weeks when the Council meets, or the Assembly, or both. Moreover the League draws smart and moneyed spectators to neighboring hotels. For seven years the League plum has meant rich lickings to the Swiss city of Geneva. Suddenly, last week, President Edmund Schulthess of Switzerland learned with hopping indignation that the Austrian Government is now definitely bidding in the manner of a chamber of commerce to entice the League to Vienna.

Naturally Monsignor Seipel, Chancellor of Austria did not trumpet his proposal, last week, like a blatant babbitt. The Chancellor is by nature as silent as a turtle. Quietly he slipped off to Prague, Czechoslovak capital. There, last week, he conferred with Foreign Minister Dr. Eduard Benes, best-posted diplomat in Europe. Dr. Benes is known to favor moving the League war-extinguisher to a city near the inflammable Balkans. Presently close-lipped Chancellor Seipel said:

"It has not been officially proposed to the Austrian Government that the League should be moved to Vienna. ... I am not opposed to the plan."

Any statement more positive than this double negative would have given Switzer land ground for offense; but Chancellor Seipel had made his meaning crystal clear. He heads a Republican Government which would gladly offer to the League for a headquarters the old, enormous, sumptuous Imperial Palace of the Habsburgs at Vienna. Thus the League would save itself the expense of building a new headquarters at Geneva to replace the present ramshackle Secretariat and the mouldering Salle de la Reformation (where the Assembly sits). Reputedly the League has considered spending -L-1,000,000 on its proposed new buildings and most of that could be saved by moving to Vienna.

The other side of the sugar plum is that Austria needs desperately some such bolstering of her commerce as the perpetual League convention would provide. The factories and marts of Vienna once supplied the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire, and with that shorn away Vienna is choked with what she can produce but cannot sell.

Significantly at this point enters the question of Anschluss: the much- mooted union of Austria with Germany. Such union is believed by many economists to be vital to the commercial survival of Austria. It could be made unnecessary by moving the League to Vienna. But Germans want Anschluss, want to absorb Austria. Therefore Germany, with a Council Seat on the League, may be expected to fight tooth and claw any move to move the League.

Throughout the week Chancellor Seipel masked the import of his visit to Prague under the excuse that he was there to lecture on The World Outlook. This he dutifully did before a huge, enthusiastic audience in which sat and applauded Dr. Benes, biggest little statesman in Europe.