Mystery at Geneva | Page 6

of the tales that were told concerning their home life together. The
two Irish delegates, O'Shane from the Free State and Macdermott from
Ulster, were personally great friends, though they did not get on well
together on platforms, as both kept getting and reading aloud telegrams
from Ireland about crimes committed there by the other's political
associates. This business of getting telegrams happens all the time to
delegates, and is a cause of a good deal of disagreeableness.
On this, the first morning of the Assembly, telegrams shot in in a
regular barrage, and nearly every delegate stopped several. Many came
from America. The trouble about America was that every nation in the
League had compatriots there, American by citizenship, but something
else by birth and sympathy, so that the Ukrainian congregation of
Woodlands, Pa., would telegraph to request the League to save their
relations in Ukraine from the atrocities of the Poles, and the Polish
settlement in Milwaukee would wire and entreat that their sisters and
their cousins and their aunts might be delivered from the marauding
Ukrainians, and Baptist congregations in the Middle West wired to the
Roumanian delegation to bring up before the Assembly the persecution

of Roumanian Baptists. And the Albanian delegate (a benign bishop)
had telegrams daily from Albania about the violation of Albanian
frontiers by the Serbs, and the Serbian delegate had even more
telegrams about the invasions and depredations of the Albanians. And
the German and Polish delegates had telegrams from Silesia, and the
Central and South American delegates had telegrams about troubles
with neighbouring republics. And the Armenians had desperate
messages from home about the Turks, for the Turks, despite the
assignment to Armenia of a national home, followed them there with
instruments of torture and of death, making bonfires of the adults,
tossing the infants on pikes, and behaving in the manner customarily
adopted by these people towards neighbours. There is this about
Armenians; every one who lives near them feels he must assault and
injure them. There is this about Turks: they feel they must assault and
injure any one who lives near them. So that the contiguity of Turks and
Armenians has been even more unfortunate than are most contiguities.
Neither of these nations ought to be near any other, least of all each
other.
Meanwhile the Negro Equality League wired, "Do not forget the
coloured races," and the Constructive Birth Control Society urged,
"Make the world safe from babies" (this, anyhow, was the possibly
inaccurate form in which this telegram arrived), and the Blackpool
Methodist Union said, "The Lord be with your efforts after a World
Peace, watched by all Methodists with hope, faith and prayer," and the
Blue Cross Society said, "Remember our dumb friends," and
Guatemala (which was not there) telegraphed, "Do not believe a word
uttered by the delegate from Nicaragua, who is highly unreliable." As
for the Bolshevik refugees, they sent messages about the Russian
delegation which were couched in language too unbalanced to be made
public either in the Assembly Journal or in these pages, but they would
be put in the Secretariat Library for people to read quietly by
themselves. This also occurred to a telegram from the
Non-Co-operatives of India, who wired with reference to the freedom
of their country from British rule, a topic unsuited to discussion from a
world platform.

All this fusillade of telegrams made but small impression on the
recipients, who found in them nothing new. As one of the British
delegates regretfully observed, "Demque nullum est jam dictum quod
non sit dictum prius--"
But one telegram there was, addressed to the acting-President of the
League, and handed in to him in the hall before the session began,
which aroused some interest. It remarked, tersely and scripturally, in
the English tongue, "I went by and lo he was not." It had been
despatched from Geneva, and was unsigned.
"And who." said the acting-President meditatively to those round him
(he was an acute, courteous, and gentle Chinaman), "is this Lo? It is a
name" (for so, indeed, it seemed to him), "but it is not my name. Does
the sender, all the same, refer to the undoubted fact that I, who shall
open this Assembly as its President, shall, after the first day's session,
retire in favour of the newly elected President? Is it, perhaps, a taunt
from some one who wishes to remind me of the transience of my office?
Possibly from some gentleman of Japan ... or America... who knows?
or does it, perhaps, refer not to myself, but to some other person or
persons, system or systems, who will, so the sender foresees, have their
day and cease to be?" The acting-President was a scholar, and well read
in English poetry. But, as his knowledge did not