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Show FORMALLY LAUNCH LEAGUE OFNATIONS ACTUAL ESTABLISHMENT OF THE LEAGUE TAKES PLACE WITH LITTLE FORMALITY. First Official Act is to Name Committee Com-mittee to Trace Saar Basin Lines. Protest is Lodged by Irishmen Irish-men at First Session. Faris. Representatives of France, Great Britain, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Spain, Japan and Brazil, members of the council of the league of nations, met in the "clock room" of the French foreign office at 10 o'clock Friday, January 16, for the first meeting in the history of the league. The council organized at 10:30 o'clock by electing Leon Bourgeois chairman and confirming the choice of Sir Eric Drummond of Great Britain as general secretary. The first official act of the council was the appointment of a commission to trace upon the spot the frontiers of the territory of the Saar basin. Leon Bourgeois, French representative, representa-tive, who presided, "said : "The task of presiding at this meeting meet-ing and inaugurating this great international inter-national institution should have fallen to President Wilson. We respect the reasons which still delay final action by our friends in Washington, but express ex-press the hope that their difficulties will soon be overcome and that a representative rep-resentative of the great American republic re-public will occupy the place awaiting him amu jg us. The work of the council coun-cil will then assume definite character charac-ter and will have that particular lorce which should be associated with our work. "January 16, 1920, will go down in history as the date of the birth of a new world. Decisions to be reached will he in the name of all nations adhering to the covenant of the league. It will be the first decree of all free nations leaguing themselves together, for the first time in the world, to substitute sub-stitute right for might. But the organization or-ganization of the league of nations will not be complete until the assembly of all ihe states meets." After the delivery of speeches, M. Bourgeois announced that the only item on the order of the day was appointment ap-pointment of three members of the commission to fix Ihe boundaries of the Saar valley. The council of the ieague of nations received the first formal protest to be presented to it almost before It came Into being wilh Friday's initial ses-' sion. The protest was from "the envoys of the eleeled government of the Irish republic" against Ihe "unreal English siinulacre of an international league of peace." No mention of Ihe protest was made dur'ng the meeting of the council, hut copies were handed to the newspaper correspondents after they left the foreign for-eign office. The? document was signed "Ouaklaigb Dufr.v." It registered objections ob-jections to Ihe pretended league of nations, and declared the league lo he an "engine of empire, designed to secure and perpetuate English hegemony heg-emony throughout both hemispheres." |