The proceedings of the first meeting of Committee No. 9 can be best reported in the words of the Assembly Journal for the following day. This journal, with its terse and yet detailed accounts of current happenings, its polite yet lucid style, and its red-hot topicality (for it is truly a journal), makes admirable reading for those who like their literature up-to-date. Those who attend the meetings of the Assembly are, as a matter of fact, excellently well-provided by the enterprise of the Secretariat with literature. A delegated or a journalist's pigeon-hole is far better than a circulating library. New every morning is the supply, and those who, in their spare hours, like a nice lie down and a nice read (all in two languages) shall have for their entertainment the Assembly Journal for the day, the Verbatim Record of the last meetings of the Assembly and Committees, selected press opinions of the affair (these are often very entertaining, and journalists approach them with the additional interest engendered by the hope that the comments they themselves have sent home to their papers may have been selected for quotation: in passing it may be observed that Henry Beechtree had, in this matter, no luck), and all kinds of documents dealing with every kind of matter—the Traffic in Women, Children, and Opium, the admission of a new State to the League, international disputes, disagreeable telegrams from one country about another, the cost of living in Geneva, the organisation of International Statistics, International Health, or International Education, the Economic Weapon of the League, the status or the frontiers of a Central European state, the desirability of a greater or a less great publicity, messages from the Esperanto Congress, and so on and so forth; every kind of taste is, in fact, catered for.

To quote, then, the Journal for the day after the first meeting of the Committee for Dealing with the Disappearance of Delegates:—

“Committee No. IX. met yesterday, Wednesday, Sept. 8th, at 3.30 p.m., under the chairmanship of M. Croza (Paraguay).

“The Chairman pointed out that the agenda before the Committee fell under several heads:—

• “1. Deprecation of baseless suspicions and malicious aspersions.
• “2. Investigation into possible or probable motives for the assaults.
• “3. Consideration of the adoption of precautionary measures to safeguard in future the persons of delegates.
• “4. Organisation of complete house to house search of the city of Geneva by police.
• “5. Consideration of various suspicions based on reason and common sense.

“In order to carry on these lines of inquiry, five sub-committees were appointed, each of which would report to the plenary committee day by day.

“All the sittings of the sub-committees would be in private, as the publicity which had been demanded by one of the delegates from Central Africa would vitiate, in this case, the effectiveness of the inquiry.

“Before the sub-committees separated, several members addressed the committee. M. Gomez (Panama) proposed that special attention should be given to the fact that Geneva at all times, but particularly during the sessions of the Assembly, was a centre of pestilential societies, among whom were to be found in large numbers Socialists, Bolshevists, Freemasons, and Jews. In his opinion, the headquarters of all these societies should be raided. Above all, it should be remembered that the delegates were all brothers in friendship, and as such were above the suspicion of any but the basest minds.

“M. Chapelle (France) said this was indeed true of the delegates, but that it would be a mistake if the committee should not keep its mind open to all possibilities, and it must be remembered that some of the nations most recently admitted to the League had bands of their fellow-countrymen in Geneva, who were undoubtedly sore in spirit over recent economic and political decisions, and might (without, well understood, the sanction of their delegates) have been guilty of this attack on the personnel of the League by way of revenge.

“Signor Nelli (Italy) strongly deprecated the suggestion of M. Chapelle as unworthy of the spirit of fraternity between nations which should animate members of the League.

“After some further discussion of Item 5 of the agenda, it was agreed to leave it to the sub-committee appointed to consider it, and the committee then broke up into five sub-committees.”

The Journal, always discreet, sheltered under the words “further discussion of Item 5” a good deal of consideration of various suspicions based on reason and common sense. Most members of the committee, in fact, had their suggestions to make; in committee people always felt they could speak more freely than in the Assembly, and did so. Bolshevist refugees, bands of marauding Poles disbanded from General Zeligowski's army, Sinn Feiners, Orangemen, Albanians, Turks, unprotected Armenians, Jugo-Slavs, women-traffickers, opium merchants, Greeks, Zionists, emissaries from Frau Krupp, Mormons, Americans, Indians, and hired assassins from l'Intransigeant and the Morning Post—all these had their accusers. Finally Mr. Macdermott (Ulster) said he would like to point out what might not be generally known, that there was a very widespread Catholic society of dubious morals and indomitable fanaticism, which undoubtedly had established a branch in Geneva for the Assembly, and much might be attributable to this.

It was this suggestion which finally caused the chairman to break the committee hastily up into its sub-committees. And, as has been said, none of this discussion found its way into the very well-edited Journal, though it would appear after some days in the procÈs-verbaux.

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