Page 54 - Bulletin, Vol.78 No.3, October 2019

The Swiss William Rappart was in charge of the Mandates Section.

The permanent court of international justice was created by Article 14 of the Covenant.
It became the International Court of Justice as the principal judicial of the United
Nations in Chapter XIV of the UN Charter of 1946.

Before the installation of the League and of the ILO in 1919, there was little business in
francophone Geneva besides banking. Then it took a new life as a centre of
international diplomacy into what was called the “spirit of Geneva”, a combination of the
life and inspiration of Jean Calvin who had made Geneva a place of refuge, Jean-
Jacques Rousseau who had found in the city a sense of justice and Henri Dunant who
made the Red Cross a pillar of humanitarianism (102) and attracted important voluntary
organizations (the future NGOs) such as the Save the Children Union.

Drummond’s tenure was associated with the spirit of Geneva, and the creation of
Geneva as the central point of global diplomacy , as a “great experiment” in multilateral
cooperation through international institutions based on an independent, competent
,international civil servants, in a wide spectrum of activities including peace and
security, disarmament, international justice, labour protection, public health, the
protection of refugees, international finances, opening the concept of global governance
to the post –WWII world. While the USA were understandably reluctant to relate the UN
and the UN family of organizations to the League and to the 1930s, the book gives
credit to the League, to Drummond and to the work of many of his close colleagues as
having inspired the creation of the UN itself and of many of the institutions in the UN
system.

More directly, many senior staff members of the League were later employed in UN
organizations: In WHO alone Dr Pierre Dorolle (France) served as DDG to several
Directors-General, Dr Raymond Gautier (Switzerland) was ADG, Dr Emilio Pampana
(Italy) was Director of the Malaria Eradication Programme), Yves Biraud (France), as
Director of Quarantine, Epidemic Intelligence and Health Statistics. At a more modest
level, I also recall being made welcome to the Personnel section of WHO then still in the
Palais des Nations by a former League employee, M. Simon, when I was recruited and
briefed as the first AFRO Personnel Officer, before travelling to Brazzaville.in the 1950s.

Through their extensive research, the authors have demonstrated first that the
League of Nations through its multiple activities and the creation of an
international civil service, the backbone of the new institution, the dynamism and
inventiveness of its principal members was the legitimate pioneer which helped
set up and staff the many branches of the United Nations,

Secondly, the authors have given Eric Drummond his legitimate place as the founder of
the independent international civil service and as the quiet and efficient leader of the
first global institution yet created, setting an example for future UN secretariat heads.

50 AAFI-AFICS BULLETIN, Vol. 78 No. 3, 2019-10