FLASH REVISE CARDS - THE SECRETARIAT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. In organizing the Secretariat, Sir Eric James Drummond, the first secretary-general (1919–33), struck out on a completely new path. He and his French and U.S. deputies built up a strictly international institution in which it was understood from the first that all officials were to act independently from their own national authorities. If this ideal was not always realized, it is still true to say that it governed the attitude of the Secretariat as a whole and that the latter was rarely if ever accused of partiality on national grounds.