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 5 The Geneva Years One must come to Geneva, as to Lourdes, filled with faith. —El Liberal of Madrid The League of Nations officially began its life when the Treaty of Versailles came into force on 10 January 1920. Acting from afar, the president of the United States—in accordance with the terms of the Covenant—summoned the first meetings of the Council and the Assembly. The Council was called first and convened on 16 January in Paris, for facilities in Geneva would not be ready until the first meeting of the Assembly in the fall. Representatives of four permanent and four nonpermanent members of the Council assembled in the Clock Room of the Quai d’Orsay. Some of the delegates to the first meeting of the Council had been seen in the Quai d’Orsay the previous year, when the Covenant was drafted there. Returnees from the League of Nations Commission of the peace conference included Léon Bourgeois of France, Paul Hymans of Belgium, and Eleuthérios Venizélos of Greece. In the case of Japan, the old cast of characters had left the stage, bearing new peerage titles in recognition of their service in the postwar settlement. Chief plenipotentiary Saionji Kinmochi returned to court affairs and political advisory duties as a genrō, with the title of prince. Makino Nobuaki received the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun and Paulownia and the title of viscount. He was elevated to the post of Imperial Household minister and later to lord keeper of the privy seal. Chinda Sutemi, exhausted from his labors at Paris, left the ambassadorship in London and returned to Japan to recuperate. He was made a count and a privy councilor and eventually became high steward and grand chamberlain in the Imperial Household Ministry. Peace conference plenipotentiaries Matsui Keishirō and Ijūin Hikokichi left their ambassadorial posts in Paris and Rome and received the title of baron; each served as foreign minister later in the decade. Matsui would represent Japan at Geneva after his appointment to the Court of St. James from 1925. Viscount Ishii Kikujirō resigned his post in Washington and was appointed The Geneva Years  from October 1920 to succeed Matsui as ambassador in Paris, a post he had held during 1912–1915. While ambassador to France, he would serve as Japan’s most noteworthy representative to the Council and Assembly of the League of Nations. President Woodrow Wilson too was recognized for his service. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1920 for his role in the creation of the League of Nations, but in March of the same year his dream of bringing his own country into the peacekeeping organization went down to bitter and irretrievable defeat in a second vote in the Senate. When Warren G. Harding was elected president in November, he announced that as far as the United States was concerned, the League of Nations was deceased. Harding’s first address to Congress upon his inauguration the following April reiterated the last rites. Some press spokesmen in Japan labeled the United States a murderer of the League, while others expressed relief that “the cobwebs of vagueness” had at last been removed from American policy. The Nichi nichi anticipated a healthier era of candor and pragmatism in Japanese-American relations: Mr. Wilson’s messages used to be based on justice and humanity, but President Harding’s message is a claim for rights and interest from beginning to end. Thus America is now reverting from an ideal kingdom of humanity to practical Americanism. The conversion of American politics along practical lines is by no means a deterioration. On the contrary, we rejoice to note that we are now able to discuss from the practical point of view the questions pending between Japan and America.1 There is no doubt that the absence of the United States hampered the effectiveness of the League of Nations during its subsequent quarter-century history. As F. P. Walters, the leading historian of the League, noted, the nonparticipation of America was a circumstance “depriving the world organization of the material contribution of its wealth and power, and the moral contribution of its impartiality in the traditional quarrels of Europe.” With the United States outside its ranks, the utility of the League in the settlement of disputes was limited to Europe, and there to disagreements among smaller states. There is also no doubt that without the United States and the Soviet Union as members, the League could...

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