Secrets

In Paris last week the Council of the League of Nations muddled on & on. Great statesmen and their contributions toward solving the Manchurian crisis:

Sir John Simon, now Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, proposed "simultaneous negotiations" 1) "between Chinese and

Japanese in Manchuria" over questions of evacuation and 2) "between statesmen of the Great Powers in Europe" over principles and rights involved. Sir John is a great lawyer. His plan, logical but impractical, was dropped.

Aristide Briand, foxy old French Foreign Minister, suggested "intervention of the United States, either independently or in collaboration with the League," a suggestion which President Hoover ignored and which made Senator Borah shout: "This proposal from Paris to intervene-in other words to employ force, for that is what it means in the settlement of the Manchurian affair-seems incredible!"

Ambassador Charles Gates Dawes, continuing his pointed refusal to sit with the Council, operated somewhat mysteriously from his Ritz Hotel sitting room. Once the General barked: "I'll have a dead secretary if anything leaks out." Later when correspondents suggested that other statesmen with whom he conferred might give an inkling, Hell-&-Maria shrilled: "They are not telling anything about what I have been doing, because nobody knows that except myself!"

Secrecy surpassed itself when the League Secretariat officially announced that Chinese Delegate Dr. Sze and Japanese Delegate Mr. Yoshizawa had agreed to a "truce"'-whereupon both orientals denied the official announcement. In Tokyo reports that Mr. Yoshizawa had used the word "truce" (thus giving away Japan's pretense that she is not at war; created such towering indignation that the diplomat's recall was rumored and almost every Japanese newspaper flayed him. Later he explained that he had not said "truce," was apparently forgiven.

All these antics caused World Court Judge Frank Billings Kellogg, onetime U. S. Secretary of State and onetime "Nervous Nelly," to observe boldly from his fireside in St. Paul, Minn, last week: "The time for secret diplomacy in grave instances of this kind is past! Private conversations are apt to be misunderstood and misinterpreted. No nation has a right to consider itself aggrieved by having its attention called to violations or threatened violations of treaties. War is no longer the private affair of belligerent nations!"

Solution? Commission? Since privacy and the formula "appoint a commission" are twin keynotes of the Hoover Administration, observers were at no loss to explain the final action of the Council last week in attempting to persuade China and Japan that a Commission should be sent to investigate Manchuria.

General Dawes was understood to have broached this scheme to Mr. Yoshizawa, who broached it to the Council and China's Dr. Sze. Catching the Hoover forward pass cleverly, Mr. Yoshizawa proposed that the Commission investigate not only Manchuria but all China an investigation which if thoroughly pursued would last until long after the original members of the Commission had died of old age.

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