Word: litvinov
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Such were words flung, last week at Geneva, by a stout, leather-lunged, aggressive Russian at the gentlemen who compose the League's Preparatory Disarmament Commission (TIME, Sept. 26, et seq.). The gentlemen, having been called "purely decorative," sat unmoved. The Russian, Comrade Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov, Assistant Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union, then proposed that every nation should...
Silence. Comrade Litvinov, concluding his speech, offers the Soviet proposal in the form of a motion. . . . Silence. . . . The motion is not seconded. . . . Litvinov stands for a long minute, lips pursed, brow furrowed, interrogative. . . .Then the League gentlemen vent their feelings by adjourning for luncheon...
When the Commission reconvenes, that afternoon, "there are speeches in reply to Litvinov. The Delegate of France, M. Joseph Paul-Boncour, takes him softly and indulgently to task for disparaging and seeking to hurry the progress of the League toward Security: a goal deemed inseparable from Disarmament. "If our progress has been slow," says M. Paul-Boncour, "the real fault lies in a lack of 'the international spirit' throughout the World, which no one can remedy...
Swiftly, now, the elastic League machinery resumes its normal course. The Commission votes to defer additional debate on the Soviet proposal until it meets again, in March. Litvinov has to be content with this, and seems not unhappy amid such pleasant surroundings. He is receiving scores of congratulatory messages. One is from Mrs. Henry Villard,* Chairman of the Manhattan Women's Peace Society. Cables she: "Thrilled by Russia's forward step toward world peace, the only one possible if we would really have true peace between nations...
This was composed of exactly the same members as the parent Disarmament Commission, except that the Russian and U. S. Delegates announced themselves unable to participate. Comrade Litvinov finally consented to sit as an "observer"; but the U. S. Delegate, Hugh R. Wilson, U. S. Minister to Switzerland, had inflexible instructions from Washington...