"Purely Personal''

The fifty-seventh council and the tenth annual assembly of the League of Nations got under way at Geneva last week with world interest focused almost solely on the newest one of the eight prime ministers present.

It was the first time since 1924 that James Ramsay MacDonald, pacificist, socialist, internationalist, has represented the British Empire at a conference of the great powers. Particularly last week it was advisable for Mr. MacDonald to show himself the broad, humanitarian champion of peace that he has always been. The Latin powers were in a huff, galled by their defeat at The Hague by Britain's stubborn, ungracious Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden (see col. 2). The French especially were furious. Therefore, on his way to Geneva, last week, astute Scot MacDonald stopped off at Paris with his apple-cheeked daughter Ishbel, to pay a tactful, friendly little call on French Prime Minister Aristide Briand, just back from three weeks of desperate haggling with Chancellor Snowden at The Hague.

After a 45-minute chat, Mr. MacDonald sped from M. Briand's office to the Gare de Lyons. Before his train chuffed out he talked to French correspondents with unwonted bonhommie. "I couldn't pass through Paris without seeing M. Briand, messieurs!" cried Pere MacDonald while Daughter Ishbel beamed. "Say simply that two old friends have met. The visit was purely personal. My old friend 'happens' --I place the emphasis on 'happens'--to be Prime Minister of France."

Asked point blank if the "entente cordiale" between Britain and France had been weakened by what Frenchmen call "The Snowden Incident," Scot MacDonald answered quick and short: "That is utterly absurd!" On reaching Geneva, he let it be known that he had in pocket an important declaration concerning world peace. At British delegation headquarters it was hinted that the prime minister would make at least a partial announcement of progress made thus far in his almost daily parleys' anent naval reduction with President Hoover's forthright, hubble-bubbling Ambassador Charles Gates Dawes (TIME, June 24, et seq.).

Though no inkling was given at Geneva of what the prime minister would say, White House correspondents understood last week that substantial Anglo-U. S. agreements, had been reached on the following points:

1) The projected naval reduction pact to be explicitly based on the obligation to disarm, implicit in the Kellogg Pact under which most of the nations of the world have already "renounced war as an instrument of national policy."

2) Reduction to take place gradually over a term of years, not by scrapping tonnage, but by not replacing worn out ships.

3) The famed "Hoover yardstick" or system comparing the "fighting strengths" of vessels (as distinguished from comparing only their tonnage) to be used chiefly in arriving at an agreement to reduce cruiser strengths, reduction of smaller craft like destroyers to proceed on a basis of simple tonnage.

4) Parity of the British and U. S. fleets to be rigidly maintained at all stages of the reduction program.

Regular business on the agenda of the present league session will include the election by the council and assembly of two world court judges, and election by the assembly only of three minor nations to nonpermanent seats on the council.