Journal de Genève
- The Imperial Conference
- 900,000 francs in savings
- Freedom of trade
The Journal de Genève of 20 October 1926 led with a column signed W. M., dated the day the Imperial Conference opened in London. The writer expected the dominion statesmen to defend their peoples' rights firmly against Britain and credited the League of Nations with speeding up the dominions' control of their own foreign affairs, citing Canada's fishing treaty with the United States and Australian postal conventions registered at Geneva without British mediation. Beside it, J. M. traced Geneva's cantonal civil-service salaries from the large 1919 increases through the 1923 cuts and the Grand Council committee's softening of them, then argued that extending the cuts, worth 900,000 francs against a 6-million deficit in the 1927 draft budget, was hard but necessary. Only the heading of an article on freedom of trade falls within the reading.
Translation
The Imperial Conference
19 October 1926 — […] imperial […] relies on the French province of Quebec. The men who represent these States can be counted on to defend firmly, in the face of Great Britain, the rights of their peoples. Moreover, over the past three years the evolution leading the dominions to conduct their foreign affairs themselves has accelerated, and it must be said that the League of Nations has played a certain part in it. On 2 March 1923 Canada, on its own authority, signed a fishing treaty with the United States and had it registered at Geneva on 2 February 1925, without going through Great Britain as intermediary. Australia did the same for various postal conventions. Ireland had registered, on 11 July [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] [?]
900,000 francs in savings
900,000 francs in savings — In 1919 civil servants' salaries had been raised considerably; in 1923 the former Council of State, noting that the cost of living had fallen a great deal and that the financial situation was serious, put forward a bill whose substance was as follows: one portion of the salaries (2,500 fr.) remained untouchable; on the remainder, a reduction of 10% was made for all civil servants except those in teaching, from whom 15% was taken, because their increase in 1919 had been larger and because they were not asked, as the others were, for an extra hour of work a day; the untouchable minimum of 2,500 fr. was abolished for teachers who had a lucrative occupation outside their teaching.¹ The result was to be a saving estimated roughly at one million francs a year up to and including 1926. The majority of the Grand Council's committee watered down the government's proposals: an untouchable minimum of 3,500 instead of 2,500; a further 500 fr. per child, likewise untouchable; 10% for members of the teaching staff as for the other civil servants. The minority (rapporteur M. Jean Cevey) approved almost in its entir-
Freedom of trade
…our finances. The draft budget for 1927 forecasts a deficit of 6 million. These 6 million must be found elsewhere. For its part — whether system No. 1 or system No. 2 is adopted — the bill extending the salary reduction is to yield 900,000 fr. in savings. It is hard, but it is unfortunately necessary. J. M. Freedom of trade
Context
An Imperial Conference timed to follow the League Assembly
W. M.'s column carries the date 19 October 1926, the day the fifth Imperial Conference opened in London; it ran until 23 November. The organisers deliberately placed it directly after the 1926 Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva, so that dominion representatives would have less travelling to do. The column's claim that the League had played a part in the dominions' growing control of their external affairs rests on a real anomaly of the post-war settlement: in 1919 the dominions signed the Treaty of Versailles as part of the British Empire delegation, yet were admitted to the League as separate members, giving them an international standing of their own in Geneva.
Canada's fishing treaty signed without Britain
The Canadian fishing treaty the column cites is the agreement known as the Halibut Treaty, a fishing agreement between the United States and Canada. Canadian accounts present it as the first time Canada negotiated and signed its own treaty without involvement from Britain, and the Imperial Conference of 1923 endorsed Prime Minister Mackenzie King's independent action in signing it. The precise dates the paper gives, signature on 2 March 1923 and registration at Geneva on 2 February 1925, are the column's own statements, as are its references to Australian postal conventions and an Irish registration. Read together, they show W. M. using the League's treaty registry as evidence that the dominions were already acting as separate international parties before the 1926 conference met.
What the conference decided: the Balfour Declaration
The column predicted that dominion leaders would press their peoples' rights against Britain, and the conference's outcome gave that pressure formal shape. The initiative for a statement of status came from South Africa's J. B. M. Hertzog and Canada's Mackenzie King. The Inter-Imperial Relations Committee chaired by Arthur Balfour drafted the text, which the prime ministers approved unanimously on 15 November 1926. It defined Great Britain and the dominions as autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status and in no way subordinate one to another. The 1930 conference restated these conclusions, and they were written into the Statute of Westminster in December 1931, turning the evolution W. M. described in 1926 into constitutional law.
A bankers' plea for freer European trade that autumn
The heading "La liberté du commerce" appeared at about the same time as a widely reported appeal on exactly that subject. Time reported in its issue of 1 November 1926 that, one morning the previous week, agents in London had handed the news agencies a round robin signed by over 100 leading financiers calling on European nations to remove their tariff hindrances to international trade; it was titled "A Plea for the Removal of Restrictions upon European Trade". Its authorship was kept hidden: the distributors refused to say who drafted it, Thomas W. Lamont of the Morgan firm said it had circulated among international financiers for some time, and Hjalmar Schacht linked it to a recent conference of German and British industrialists in England. The reading contains only the Geneva article's heading, so it cannot show whether the paper discussed this manifesto. Separately, the League's World Economic Conference, first suggested in 1925 by Louis Loucheur, met in Geneva from 4 to 23 May 1927 with 46 member countries; Time's report did not connect the manifesto to that conference.
Original
La Conférence impériale
19 octobre 1926 - ence impériale s'appuie sur la province française de Québec. On peut compter sur les hommes qui représentent ces Etats pour défendre fermement, en face de la Grande-Bretagne, les droits de leurs peuples. D'ailleurs, depuis trois ans, l'évolution qui porte les dominions à conduire eux-mêmes leurs affaires extérieures s'est précipitée, et il faut dire que la Société des nations y a joué un certain rôle. Le 2 mars 1923, le Canada a, de sa propre autorité, signé avec les Etats-Unis un traité de pêche et l'a fait enregistrer à Genève, le 2 février 1925, sans passer par l'intermédiaire de la Grande-Bretagne. L'Australie a fait de même pour diverses conventions postales. L'Irlande a fait enregistrer, le 11 juillet [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] [?] [?]
900.000 fr. d'économies
900. 000 fr. d'économies - En 1919, les traitements des fonctionnaires avaient été augmentés dans des proportions considérables; en 1923, l'ancien Conseil d'Etat, constatant que le coût de la vie avait beaucoup diminué et que la situation financière était grave, présenta un projet de loi dont la substance était la suivante: une tranche des traitements (2500 fr.) restait intangible; sur le surplus, une réduction de 10% était opérée pour tous les fonctionnaires sauf ceux de l'enseignement, auxquels on enlevait 15% en raison du fait que l'augmentation avait été pour eux plus forte en 1919 et qu'on ne leur demandait pas, comme aux autres, un supplément quotidien de travail d'une heure; le minimum intangible de 2500 fr. était supprimé pour les professeurs ayant une profession lucrative en dehors de leur enseignement¹. Le résultat devait être une économie évaluée grosso modo à un million de francs par an jusqu'en 1926 y compris. La majorité de la commission du Grand Conseil édulcora les propositions du gouvernement: minimum intangible 3500 au lieu de 2500; 500 fr. de plus par enfant également intangibles; 10% pour les membres du corps enseignant aussi bien que pour les autres fonctionnaires. La minorité (rapporteur M. Jean Cevey) approuvait à peu près intégra -
La liberté du commerce
nos finances. Le projet de budget de 1927 prévoit 6 millions de déficit. Ces 6 millions, il faut les retrouver par ailleurs. Pour sa part - que l'on adopte le système nº 1 ou le système nº 2 - le projet de prorogation de la réduction des traitements doit procurer 900. 000 fr. d'économies. C'est dur, mais c'est malheureusement nécessaire. J. M. La liberté du commerce