(Due to arrive Melbourne-24.4.26)

My dear P.M.,

This is merely the lighter side of Geneva. I had a little
amusement with Theodoli [1] (Chairman, Permanent Mandates
Commission) at lunch one day. At a convenient time during the
meal, I asked him how the Mandates Commission would view a treaty
between Australia, as mandatory power for the Territory of New
Guinea, and the Dutch, by which say 100 square miles of the
mandated territory were to be ceded to Dutch New Guinea in return
for accommodation elsewhere. His grasp of English is a little weak
and he got the immediate impression that he was being 'tried out'
on an actual case. He sprang into the air and said: 'No, no; you
cannot do it, you cannot do it; these things have first to be
reviewed by the Mandates Commission.' I then asked him what was
the difference between our acting in this way and the Jouvenal
Treaty [2] between Syria and Turkey. He then saw the point and
smiled and said: 'Ah yes, but that is just the point. The Mandates
Commission take the view that the Jouvenal Treaty cannot function
until it has been passed by the Commission. At the moment we do
not know the terms of the Jouvenal Treaty and in any case we will
have to review its terms.'

He then took the simile to its extreme and instanced Australia as
Mandatory for T.N.G., ceding part of the Mandate to Australia, as
administrator of Papua.

M. da Costa [3], the Portuguese Delegate, became President of the
Assembly at Geneva by virtue of no one else having thought it
worthwhile to intrigue for the job for such a short Assembly. He
gave a large and expensive dinner party to 100 delegates and their
entourages, at which I found myself sitting between the Latvian
Minister at Rome and the Colombian Minister at Madrid-M. Schumans
[4] and M. Urrutia. [5] The Lett was a decent clean-looking
Northerner and the Colombian was a dissipated looking old
Southerner, whom I should think had been dropped by his nurse in
his early days. We had a little French and German in common-but
complicated on both sides by Slav and Spanish pronunciation
respectively. Two contretemps marked the dinner for me. The Lett
and I had agreed (with great linguistic difficulty) that we didn't
hold with academic intellectuals and he had got off the German
proverb:-

'Funf und siebzig Professoren
Das Vaterland ist ganz verloren'
which, in due course, I repeated to the Colombian. However, it
didn't go very well because as I learnt later he was a Professor
himself in real life!

Later on, the Colombian was telling me what a wonderful sporting
country Colombia was, birds of prey and sporting birds everywhere-
you just had to kick them out of your way if you wanted to get
along at all. One bird in particular was apparently particularly
plentiful, but he couldn't tell me its name in anything but
Spanish. He appealed unsuccessfully to Chu [6], the Chinaman, and
Morales [7], the Dominican (whose looks belie his name, by the
way!) who sat opposite to tell him the English or French for this
Spanish bird. Just then a dish was pushed under his nose and his
face worked convulsively for a moment; he impaled one of the small
birds on his fork and thrust it at me. 'Voila, par exemple, un de
nos oiseaux sportiffs'-a quail!

One of the ribald stories of the Assembly hinges on the person of
Jimmy James, the well-known representative of the 'New York Times'
in Paris. James had had a terrific party with a young Spaniard at
a Geneva Assembly a couple of years ago-the young Spaniard being
Yanguas [8], then attached to the Spanish Delegation in a minor
capacity. By a turn of the political wheel, Yanguas has become
Spanish Foreign Secretary and at this Assembly was Chief Spanish
Delegate. On the first day of this Assembly, Jimmy James
encounters Yanguas in the lobby of the Bergues Hotel, remembers
him only as his one time boon companion and, in his well-known
booming voice addresses him: 'Well, well, Buddy. What d'you know
about my meeting you again-Isn't it time we went out and got drunk
together again!' Yanguas was hurried away by his staff before
Jimmy James could say anything worse.

One of the same gentleman's remarks that added a little to the
otherwise not very noticeable gaiety of the Assembly was in
connection with Stresemann's [9] build, and the German application
for a permanent Council seat. 'Why, the man's got a perfectly good
seat. The only trouble is that he's got nowhere to put it!'
As a suitable finish to this Assembly someone said it should be
known as the FrancoMellodrama.

I am, Yours sincerely,
R. G. CASEY