Introduction: Black Pantomime at the Palais des Nations

Abstract

As Christmas 1976 neared and the Geneva conference on Rhodesia wore on it seemed increasingly clear that the meeting was haunted. To wander in the halls or grounds of the Palais des Nations is, to be fair, a pretty strange experience in its own right. For these are the headquarters of the ill-fated League of Nations and the ghosts of Woodrow Wilson, Clemenceau, and Lloyd George linger quite unmistakably on this hillside overlooking the fair city of Geneva. The buildings themselves awkwardly juxtapose the new brutalism of steel and glass with the palladian echoes of Versailles. To stroll in the gardens is to imagine oneself an extra in L’Année Dernière à Marienbad, particularly now that the carefully arcadian and landscaped grounds are dominated by the huge and futuristic monument to Soviet space achievements which the Russians have recently — and mysteriously — insisted on erecting. The combined effect is uncomfortably weird — as if a spaceship has come to rest in the Petit Trianon. In these surroundings it is quite impossible not to remember the ill-fated conception, the naive pretensions, and the impotent failures of the League of Nations.