A portly Persian with a bushy black beard handled the gavel as the Assembly of the League of Nations met in Geneva, last week, to talk "Security," "Disarmament" and then the "United States of Europe." P. is for Persia and alphabetically it was P.'s turn to preside. Nervously Persia's swart Prince Mirza Mohammed Ali Khan Foroughi assumed the chair. Perspiring, he constantly wiped his brow with a bright pink silk handkerchief. Then diffidently, as though conscious that the words of a Prince were as chaff to these commoners, he sped the Assembly's, proceedings with a dash of Orient philosophy thus:
"It is the law of human affairs that nothing in this world is stable which does not rest on habit. You gentlemen of the League are creating the habit of Peace. Persia wishes you speedy success!"
Transcendental Scot. The great commoner at Geneva last week was tall, snowy-haired, ruddy-cheeked Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald of Great Britain. He spoke his mind to the Assembly and the World as though he stood in some vast, sky-vaulted International House of Commons. Logical at first, he rose to the passionate climax of a messiah, spoke of "the mystic common tie of nationhoods," showed startlingly how transcendental is his Scotch Socialism.
Seated in the gallery, Widower MacDonald's sturdy helpmate-daughter Ishbel fairly glowed. She had never seen her father in finer fettle. She understood that he was making an international declaration of what is to be the foreign policy of the British Empire now that he has returned to power. He was taking the world into his confidence, laying his Socialist heart bare. With five prime ministers and 53 national delegations present and listening, apple-cheeked Ishbel MacDonald proudly watched the unfolding of her father's great speech:
International Security. "The problem of the League of Nations is the prob-lem of Security," began Messiah MacDonald quietly. Recalling that during his short previous term as Prime Minister in 1924 he sought to secure the peace of Europe by championing the Geneva Protocol (intended to "put teeth into the Covenant of the League"), he declared that "since 1924 we have started upon another road. The [Kellogg-Briand] Pact of Peace has been signed at Paris, and that pact is now the starting point of further work. ... To a certain extent the pact is still a castle in the air and the Assembly of the League is going to build up the foundations to support this castle. . . . The British Government is desirous that that pact shall be not only a declaration on paper but shall be translated into constitutions and institutions that will work for peace in Europe!"