Strains Avoided

In London's great Gothic Guildhall, Sir Austen Chamberlain rose last week to make a speech defending the League of Nations. 'The joint responsibility of the civilized world is embodied in the League," said he. "But we must first educate public opinion, so the League does not overstrain its strength now."

Disarmament. In Geneva, the League's moribund Disarmament Conference was most careful not to overstrain its strength last week. The steering committee met briefly, adjourned until April 30, arranged that the full Conference should reassemble May 23. None too cheerful was the President of the Conference, "Uncle Arthur" Henderson: "Now in almost all the leading countries, armament budgets are beginning to increase. Those contemptuous of the whole idea of disarmament through collective security say we had better cut our losses and go home, and urge us indeed to go back to international anarchy. But you who are charged with the responsibility for the destinies of our peoples, you know that to give up the enterprise of disarmament and the organization of peace, would not mean an end to your troubles. You know that if we closed down tomorrow you would all go home to face difficulties in comparison with which the troubles with which you are now wrestling would seem insignificant."

Liberia. One country from which the League used to take no back talk was impoverished Liberia. Three years ago, after news came that Liberia's governing classes, the descendants of liberated slaves from the U. S., were oppressing and actually enslaving the native tribesmen, the League sent out an investigating commission. A year later one of the commissioners, a Scots physician named Dr. Melville D. Mackenzie, returned to Liberia to persuade the warlike Kru tribe to stop resisting the Government. Last week positive information came to the League that the Liberians were at it again, worse than ever. Here again the League saved its strength. League officials met to see whether it would be possible to expel naughty Liberia from the League. Under the Covenant there were only two possibilities. Liberia was not an aggressor nation. That ruled out Article XVI. The investigators also discarded Article XXIII, declaring that expulsion for failing to maintain fair and humane labor conditions would set too far-reaching a precedent. Humbly the League hoped that the three nations most concerned with Liberia's existence--the U. S., her foster-father and chief investor (Firestone Tire & Rubber); and France and Britain, African neighbors to the west and east--would exert private pressure. Mickey Mouse. On one subject alone the League threw caution to the winds and exerted its full strength last week: Mickey Mouse. Not only did the League give the world's most famed rodent its full and official approval last week, but it went a step further. The League of Nations Committee on Child Welfare prepared to draw up an international treaty which would allow Mickey Mouse and other approved films "especially for children" entry duty free into any League land. The Committee deplored those films "that put criminal ideas into young heads and give young people stupid ideas about love," urged Hollywood to produce films based on the life of the industrious ant. Re-employment. The League's International Labor Office last week published its quarterly figures on world unemployment. Compared with March 1933, U. S. unemployment has fallen from 13,294,000 to 11,374,000. Britain's from 2,914,000 to 2,343,000. Nazi Germany has halved its unemployed of last April. Of the major powers, only in France has unemployment increased, from 369,652 to 373,900.

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