6. How the world failed the League of Nations, then began again

Dark Palace begins in Geneva.  The story of the League is already well advanced, though the darkness of the title lies ahead.  It’s 1931; Moorhouse tells us this in the second line.  It’s not a date he would have featured at the beginning of his two-book undertaking but he’s entered the period for which he can expect his readers, the older of them at least, to recognise the significance of dates.  I say this even though the Great Depression, which was at its worst in 1931, is hardly mentioned.  This reminds me that by the time we get to 1946, when World War 2 is over and the League is all but washed-up, he’s made no mention of atom bombs dropped on Japanese cities, indeed virtually no mention of the war in the Pacific at all.  His concentration on the vestigial League’s skeleton staff in Geneva has been very disciplined, and he’s able to do this because for most of Grand Days he’s taken it for granted, I think, that some sense of the war’s events and those leading to it is lurking in the minds of his readers.  For instance, before the book has reached its midpoint he starts a chapter with ‘Australia, 1936’, and I find myself supplying, as many readers will, even must, my own sense of the country and the period he’s introducing.  Several chapters and a fifth of the book later, he returns us to Europe simply by announcing ‘1938’ and we know from the date alone that we are entering the darkness referred to above. [read more]