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A LIVING CORPSE

The League of Nations is 20 years of age. But it looks much older. Judging by outward appearance it could be two thousand years old. It has turned into an unburied mummy. Visitors in Geneva step into the League of Nations palace showing similar curiosity as in entering an old time museum. Everything is empty, silent and and they can feel the stink of mould. The learned secretary of this institution, Mr. Avenol, serves gapers by putting out such rarities as Poland of the Pans carefully canned with sprinkled spirits. The bourgeois historians once quarreled about who was the first presenter of the idea for a league of nations — was it Pyotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky in America or Pyotr Ivanovich Dobchinsky in France. Currently, no one argues about this. Both Bobchinskys and Dobchinskys deny their own failed favorite child.

The birthday of the League of Nations will never be celebrated by its parents. One really feels sorry for them! Even on the Rocky Mountains unburied bodies were taken care more properly. Dishonourably born, dishonourably buried will be the fate of the League of Nations. The League is the favourite child of the piratical Versailles peace treaty. It was created to strengthen Anglo-French hegemony in Europe, to maintain British supremacy all over the capitalistic world.

It is an image of all the vices of the Versailles peace system, the very one that has divided the world into master and slave states. All the conflicts tearing apart the capitalistic society and the post-war Versaillesian system of imperialism went through the League of Nations, and made it shake from the very beginning.

The League of Nations started with giving its blessing to bandit attacks on the land of Soviets, the young state of workers and peasants. And now, the League ends its very existence by trying to form a new anti-Soviet bloc.

Twenty years ago the League of Nations was still young even though the stigma of the old age of capitalism already shadowed its face. The masters of the League enjoyed the opportunity to send their troops against the Soviet Union and neutral states humbly followed the suite. However, the League along with the Anglo-French imperialism received a stunning blow from the then still weak Soviet state.

Now, lacking teeth and hair and lying paralyzed the League of Nations again tried to instigate a campaign against the huge Socialist country, Soviet Union. But all ended laughably and wrong. The war-mongering Anglo-French masters can only shake their fists, with the neutral states getting nowhere. With the "expulsion" of Soviet Union the League of Nations simply confirmed its complete political and moral bankruptcy.

It was born sick, scrofulatic, infected by the "English disease" from the very beginning. The United States didn't join the League. American capitalists were not willing to share their hegemony between British and French capitalists. This immediately affected the authority and power of the League. The Versailles system was cracking in all its joints. It didn't give or have the capability to confirm a stable peace. It couldn't either strengthen the Anglo-French hegemony in Europe and over the world. British imperialists fighted against French imperialists. The League of Nations was a seat of discord and intrigues. It was not able to decide on anything or, much less to do something. It babbled about peace and disarmament, its staff spent a lot of money and created paper mountains higher than Mont Blanc. And when frail Genevan mice crept out from this paper mountains, the whole world bursted into laughs.

The Soviet proposal for a full or partial disarmament were buried in the League. There were preparations going on for a new imperialistic war. Everybody could notice this. Small countries cried for help from the League, in vain. Under the strict supervision of its Anglo-French masters the League couldn't make a move.

The weakness of the League came more and more evident. If there still was any authority left and any attention was paid to it, it was only because of the Soviet Union was its member. She gave some lease of life to this languishing institution.

The Soviet people saw the significance of the League of Nations as a small modest river bank, a tiny obstruction in war preparations, as a forum to reveal countries of aggression, a sort of instrument, how insignificant it ever was, in preventing a war to break out.

Soviet Union made her all to prevent a world war as long as the League was this sort of "bank". But Anglo-French imperialists together destroyed even this feeble bank. They declared a war on Germany. All proposals for peace were rejected by them. The League of Nations couldn't act even as the weakest instrument of peace. The expulsion of the Soviet Union gives a clear proof of this. As a member of the the League, she disclosed aggressors without feeling any sort of pity. This didn't please the Anglo-French masters of this Genevan institution. After having gone through this disgraceful play, dictated in London, its lost the last signs of life with the expulsion of the Soviet Union. As an instrument of peace the League of Nations did not exist any more. It simply is — a living corpse.

Still, for some time, the League can pollute the air with its false messages. Mummies can even make "miracles". But the public has lost its confidence in these tear shedding relics. The League of Nations has in the hands of British imperialists become an instrument for flaming their war.

D. Saslavski [D. Zaslavski].
"From Pravda" [Jan 11, 1940]

Translation from Finnish: Pauli Kruhse (2008).
Source: "Kansan valta", (People's Power), Nr. 6, Jan. 17, 1940. Soviet propagandistic newspaper dropped into Finnish trenches. Formally a publication of the Soviet mandated new Democratic Government of Finland led by emigré Finnish communist Otto Kuusinen.

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