296 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
Geneva to appeal to the League Council and its president. The
Russians did likewise.
The question now was whether among the statesmen at
Geneva one would be found who, ignoring all the narrower
political considerations, would be ready to call the attention of
the League of Nations to the fact that millions of innocent
people were starving in the middle of the continent of Europe,
while at the same time large supplies of food were available or
had even been destroyed in the regions possessing surpluses.
Would there be a statesman with the courage to put before the
League the question of organizing relief in the Soviet Union,
a man round whom the others could group themselves in the
fight for the most elementary human solidarity and against the
domination of selfish interests?
Such a man there was in the person of Dr. Mowinckel. The
successor of Fritjof Nansen as Norwegian representative in
the League Assembly, Dr. Mowinckel was fully conscious of
the great tradition his people had to maintain. The authentic
documents submitted to him left him in no doubt as to the
terrible situation of the people in the Soviet Union; and this
decided him. It may be presumed that he was also influenced
by the fact that the people especially affected by the fearful
calamity was one which was not represented at Geneva and
had there no defender of its rights and interests. Dr. Mowinckel
entered the lists courageously and unselfishly against short-
sighted state interests and misconceived political considerations.
All the initiated followed this move of Dr. Mowinckel, his
championship of the relief action which the most elementary
humanity dictated, with the keenest expectation. But what
followed will stand on record as characteristic of the difficulties
which hamper the League of Nations, and above all as proof
that current political interests are predominant there. It
would take us too far to describe in detail how, when the
president of the League Council proposed that this body should
take up the question of relief for the starving in Russia, all