Word: soviets
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Further to harass the Commission, there was present in Geneva the author of the Russian project, Comrade Maxim Maximovitch Litvinov, a round-faced, round-bodied but keen-witted little man who is Soviet Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs. Bustling straight to the point, he stood up before the Commission and charged that, although the League Assembly & Council have considered the problems of disarmament on 38 separate occasions, and although its deliberations have been continued by 14 committees during more than 120 series of sittings, still the fact remains -said Comrade Litvinov-that "not a single real step had been taken...
Since the League road is thus proving so infinitely long, why not take the Soviet short cut? Solemnly Comrade Litvinov concluded: "The Soviet Government declares it is ready to abolish all military forces in accordance with its draft convention as soon as a similar decision is passed and simultaneously carried out by other States. The Soviet Government asks the other Governments represented here if they also are ready...
Faced by this project for speedy disarmament, could League slow-pokers retort successfully to the plausible if specious Soviet plan? Could they discredit it, tear it to tatters, and at the same time justify before public opinion the League's slow, plodding ways? Such a task required _a Cicero - or, as Anglo-Saxons said, later in the week - a Cushendun...
...hero, Baron Cushendun, rose and towered six feet six over the wide horse shoe table in the League Glass Room. With biting innuendo and battering logic for more than an hour he attacked the Soviet draft convention article by article, and finally in principle...
...There are two kinds of war. . . . There are international and civil wars, and of these the civil is the more horrible. ... It is a fair question to ask whether the Soviet Government sets its face against civil war as resolutely as against international war. . . . For years past the whole basis for the Soviet world policy has been to produce armed insurrection amounting to civil war in every country where they can exercise influence...