“Mon Dieu, M. le Vice-Président,” she ejaculated. “Mon Dieu!” And proceeded in her rich, voluptuous voice to dwell on the iniquities of the traffic in women and children all over the world. The nets of these traffickers were spread even in Geneva—that city of good works—and who would more greatly desire to make away with the good men of the League of Nations than these wicked traffickers? How well it was known among them that Lord Burnley, Dr. Svensen, and Dr. Chang held strong opinions on this subject....
At this point a French delegate leaped to his feet and made strong and rapid objection to these accusations. No one more strongly than his pure and humane nation disliked this iniquitous traffic in flesh and blood, but the devil should have his due, and there was no proof that the traffickers were guilty of the crimes now under discussion. Much might be allowed a lady speaker in the height of her womanly indignation, which did credit to her heart and sex, but scarcely so much as that.
For a moment it looked like a general squabble, for other delegates sprang to their feet and called out, and the interpreters, dashing round the hall with notebooks, could scarcely keep pace, and every one was excited except the Japanese, who sat solemnly in rows and watched. For the hold, usually so firm, exercised by the chair over the Assembly, had given way under the stress of these strange events, and in vain did the Deputy-President knock on the table with his hammer and cry “Messieurs! Messieurs! La parole est à Mademoiselle la Déléguée de la Roumanie!”
But he could not repress those who called out vehemently that “Il ne s'agit pas à present de la traite des femmes; il s'agit seulement de la disparition de Messieurs les Délégués!” And something unconsidered was added about those states more recently admitted to the League, which had to be hastily suppressed.
Mademoiselle la Déléguée on the platform continued meanwhile to coo to heaven her indignation at the iniquitous traffic in these unhappy women, until the Deputy-President, in his courteous and charming manner, suggested in her ear that she should, for the sake of peace, desist, whereupon she smiled and bowed and swept down into the hall, to be surrounded by congratulating friends shaking her by the hand.
“M. Menavitch demande la parole,” announced the Deputy-President, who should have known better. The delegate for the Serb-Croat-Slovene state stood up in his place (it was scarcely worth while to ascend the platform for his brief comments) and remarked spitefully that he had just (as so often) had a telegram from Belgrade to the effect that a thousand marauding Albanians had crossed their frontier and were invading Serbia, and that, to his personal knowledge, there was a gang of these marauders in Geneva, and, in his view, the responsibility for any ruffianly crime committed in this city was not far to seek. He then sat down, amid loud applause from the Greeks and cries of “shame” from the English-speaking delegates. A placid Albanian bishop rose calmly to reply. He, too, it seemed, had had a telegram from the seat of his government, and his was about the Serbs, but before he had time to state its contents the Deputy-President stayed the proceedings. “The session,” he said, “cannot be allowed to degenerate into an exchange of international personalities.”
“And [why] not?” inquired the Belfast voice of the delegate from Ulster. “I'd say the Pope of Rome had some knowledge of this. I wouldn't put it past him to have plotted the whole thing.”
“Ask the Black and Tans,” his Free State colleague was naturally moved to retort.
“My God,” whispered the Secretary-General to the Deputy-President. “If the Irish are off.... We must stop this.”
Fortunately, here the delegates for Paraguay eased the situation by proposing that the question of the disappearance of delegates should be referred to a committee to be elected for that purpose, and that the voting for that committee should begin forthwith. (The South American delegates always welcomed the appointment of committees, for they always hoped to be on them.) Lord John Lester, one of the delegates from Central Africa, who was less addicted to committees, thinking that their methods lacked expedition, rose to protest, but was overruled. The Assembly as a whole would obviously feel happier about this affair if it were in committee hands, so the elections were proceeded with at once. The delegate for Central Africa resigned himself, only remarking that he hoped at least that the sessions of the committee would be public, for as he had often said, publicity was the life blood of the League.