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Meanwhile the Assembly of the League of Nations, meeting under a circus-tent canopy of grey cloth erected to reduce the glare from a huge skylight, rushed through necessary preliminaries prior to hearing Sir Samuel Hoare. Elected President of the Assembly by an overwhelming majority was Dr. Eduard Benes, perpetual Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia and "Europe's Smartest Little Statesman," who today covertly sides with Il Duce. With his accustomed dexterity, Assembly President Benes at once secured postponement until next year of two agenda items highly distasteful to Italy's Dictator. The first urged League prohibition of the sale of war supplies and raw materials to a belligerent; the second proposed to amend the League Covenant, which sanctions war under certain conditions, so as to make it square with the Briand-Kellogg Peace Pact outlawing war "as an instrument of national policy." A final tactical maneuver was to secure the defeat of Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Maximovich Litvinoff, who ran for one of the Assembly's vice-presidencies intending to sound off from this vantage point with one of his Communist attacks on Fascist Italy as a spearhead of Capitalism.
Thus the Geneva stage was set for the maiden speech before the League Assembly of new Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare.
Slap! Slap! Slap! The lean, lithe, greying Briton spoke with every ounce of emphasis he could muster, frequently repeating phrases and whole sentences to drive them home, but his tone was level, unemotional, deadly earnest.
"As the newest Foreign Minister in this gathering," began Sir Samuel, "I would like to congratulate the eldest Foreign Minister. For Dr. Benes, although young in years and of vigorous aspect, has held his office longer than anyone else in this hall. He and I are old friends. . . ."
"I shall speak freely, avoiding rhetoric," continued the Foreign Secretary. "It may be sometimes difficult for our foreign friends to follow the course of British policy. It is perhaps difficult for them to understand the workings of the British mind. Do we not seem even to our kinder critics a curious people? . . . It may have been imagined that, possessing territories over the whole world, we naturally are anxious to support an institution [the League of Nations] that might be used for keeping things as they were. . . . If these suspicions are still in anyone's mind let him once and for all dispel them. . . . No selfish or imperialist motives enter into our minds at all."
Proceeding in his even way, Sir Samuel took a polite slap at Il Duce: "The Spirit of War—of war, to quote the Pact, as 'an instrument of national policy,' even perhaps of war for war's sake—has raised its head in more places than one. . . . The armaments of most countries, and, last of all, of my own country, are increasing. . . . A vicious circle of insecurity has been set up."