League of Nations Secretariat

by Torsten Kahlert, Dr. Phil, History, Research Associate, Marbach Weimar Wolfenbüttel Research Network

The Directors were the highest international civil servants below the Secretary-General and its DSG/USG. Taken all together they formed the so called “High Directorate” or “Haute Direction”. As has been said, the League’s Secretariat was divided into several functional sections, the Political Section, the Economic Section, the Mandates Section, the Legal Section, the Health Section, the Minorities Sections, the Social Questions and the Communications and Transit Section and so on. Each Section was headed by a Director. They were responsible for leading their Section and managing their staff and resources in accordance with the general policies of the League laid out by the Council and the General Assembly. The Directors can be seen in a way as “the men behind the man”. They reported to the Secretary General about their work during the so-called director’s meetings (often once a week). Additionally, a selected group of Directors were part of an advisory group for the Secretary-General dealing with questions of appointments, promotions, and dismissals of higher officials of the Secretariat: the so-called Appointments Committee. They were in contact with networks of their home countries and with the respective diplomatic, economic or governmental experts, as well as institutions and organizations of their field of expertise.

Over the course of the League’s existence 32 officials from 15 different countries served for a shorter or longer period of time as Directors of one of the Secretariat’s Sections. They formed an expert diplomatic elite and were decisive in shaping the rules and practices of the new administrative body together with the Secretariat’s leadership. In this way, they defined their own role, the notion of the international civil servant, laying ground for its long-term perception throughout the twentieth century.

Director positions were hard-won, prestigious positions in a new international administration. But who made it there and for how long? The Secretariat’s development in general, and specifically in terms of its personnel, was influenced by many processes and events from inside and outside the organization. None of the directors held the position for the entire span of the Secretariat’s existence from 1919 to 1946. Some had long careers in it, some stayed very briefly. Even though according to the Covenant all positions were equally open to women and men alike, only one woman was appointed as head of a section. It was Rachel Crowdy, who served at the head of the Social Questions and Opium Traffic Section from 1922-1931, though, tellingly, she never made the rank of Director.

Haakon A. Ikonomou 2023