"Service to Humanity!"

Despairing China made a last effort to get action at Geneva last week from the Council of the League of Nations and Sitter-for-the-U. S. Prentiss Gilbert, exponent on Golden Silence.

Japanese planes continued to bomb, Japanese troops continued to slaughter such Chinese as resisted them in Manchuria (see p. 20) while the League Council debated.

"The whole thing is a nightmare!" exclaimed Leading Councilman Aristide Briand, French Foreign Minister, in an unguarded moment. But officially this "Master Parliamentarian" sought to save the League's face thus: "We have already made war more difficult than it used to be . . . . By preventing this conflict from degenerating into war, the League has rendered great service to humanity."

This of course was duck soup and nuts to bantamweight Kenkichi Yoshizawa, hard-boiled Delegate of Japan. If M. Briand wanted to claim that Japan was not at war, so did Japan. The Imperial Government have declared for weeks and continued to declare through Mr. Yoshizawa that Japanese bombing and slaying is not warfare but protection of Japanese lives and property in Manchuria.

Minimum of Minimums. Specifically the China-Japanese struggle in the League Council boiled down to this: everyone present, including Chinese Delegate Dr. Sze, realized that Japan, because of her might and the unwillingness of other Great Powers to invoke their might against her, must be given the benefit of every doubt and quibble, must be asked to make no more than the absolute minimum of concession.

This minimum, the Council decided after investigating technicalities, would be: a promise by Japan to withdraw all her forces by some specific date from the zone she recently occupied in Manchuria.

Last week, as heretofore, Mr. Yoshizawa would agree to no specific date whatever. With broad grins he asserted every day, "Japanese troops are already withdrawing. . . . They will all be withdrawn as soon as possible." Finally the Council, in an effort to defend their minimum of minimums last week, set as the date for complete evacuation by Japan, Nov. 16-- or did they?

The Council, acting under Article XI, could "resolve" only by unanimous vote. Unable to resolve, the Council was reduced to recommending. It can recommend by simple majority. Sadly the little vote was taken. Up went 13 hands to "recommend" that Japan evacuate by Nov. 16. Up went one brown hand in opposition. Droned Aristide Briand, "Carried unanimously minus one vote-- that of the representative of Japan."

This work done, the Council adjourned to Nov. 16--but not until Councilmen had anxiously queried Sitter Gilbert as to whether on Nov. 16 he will sit with them again, thus investing the League a second time with the majestic prestige of Statesman Stimson and President Hoover. Still convinced that silence is golden, Sitter Gilbert refused absolutely to state whether he will sit again or not.

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