isputes, the Council is to do its best .bmit the questions at issue to judicial If one of them agrees to arbitration, point a Committee of Arbitrators. If o arbitration, the Council is to take the and, if it comes to a unanimous decision having no voice), this decision is to be fails to agree, it is to refer the matter and shall itself determine the composition, >cedure of the Committee of Arbitrators. indertake to carry out in good faith the ny of these methods. Should a State, in ndertakings, resort to war, the sanctions. XVI of the Covenant shall at once become

ngs, the implications of which are worked out d to the definition of "aggression." It is laid :: y State which resorts to war in violation of the tained in the Covenant or in the present Protocol and the signatory Powers agree, without further in an economic boycott of the offending State. agree to come to the assistance of the threatened e League with their armed forces, but in the case of apparently, only "in the degree which its position and its peculiar situation as regards allow."

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rotocol also proposes to extend the jurisdiction of the eyond its own borders. Article XVI runs as follows :-ignatory States agree that in the event of a dispute between ore of them and one or more States which have not signed the Protocol and are not members of the League of Nations, such ember States shall be invited, on the conditions contemplated in XVII of the Covenant, to submit, for the purpose of a pacific nent, to the obligations accepted by the States signatories of the ent Protocol.

if the State so invited, having refused to accept the said conditions obligations, resorts to war against a signatory State, the provisions Article XVI of the Covenant, as defined by the present Protocol, all be applicable to it.

Such are the main provisions of the "Geneva Protocol,” on the ratification of which the summoning of the disarmament

mixed. Many of the smaller States hastened to accept it. France did the same; which is not surprising, since the draft was based on a scheme worked out by the French General Staff, and it consecrated the principle of separate alliances which, from the French point of view, offered more hope of security than any vague obligations. To the British Government, on the other hand, the treaty was almost wholly unacceptable. The objections were stated in a long despatch addressed by the late Prime Minister to the Secretary-General of the League on 5th July last. He poured merited scorn on the idea that the Council could decide within four days as to which of two belligerents was the aggressor, especially in view of the fact that a Commission of the League, appointed to define an "act of aggression," had been unable to agree on any satisfactory definition. In the absence of any certainty in this matter, he said, the treaty could not be made the basis for a reduction of armaments. He objected to the whole idea of “military pressure," which could only be made effective if carried out at once and on a pre-arranged plan, a thing declared by the experts of the League to be all but impossible in the case of a general treaty of assistance. He pointed out the danger of "partial treaties," which-even if concluded under the ægis of the League-would inevitably lead to counter-alliances and the restoration of that balance of power which it was the object of the League to supersede. He objected to the Council being empowered to "determine" and "decide," instead of merely advising. This, he argued, would constitute it "an executive body, with very large powers, instead of an advisory body."

The most important objection of all, however, was due to the immense burden and responsibility which, under this treaty, would be thrown upon Great Britain. The limitation of the obligations by continents might soothe the alarms of most States, but the British Empire is world-wide and there is not a continent in which Great Britain might not be called upon to intervene. So far from leading to disarmament, the treaty would necessitate a large increase of the British navy. It was proposed, in fact, to impose obligations which it would be impossible to carry out, and the treaty would therefore inevitably fail to produce that general sense of security which would alone persuade the nations to disarm. In short, it held out " no serious prospect of advantage sufficient to compensate the world for the immense complication

of international relations which it would create, the uncertainty of the practical effect of its clauses, and the consequent difficulty of conducting national policy."

The unhappy Draft Treaty was thus slain in the house of its friends. It had been defended by Lord Cecil in a series of impassioned utterances, not only as solving the question of French security, but as ensuring a permanent pacification which would be “an enormous prize for the British Empire." Mr. Ramsay MacDonald shared the same ideal, but did not hold the same view. For him the Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance was a great menace to the League of Nations, and essentially a war preparation. His own views he had put forward in his speech at Geneva on the 4th of September last. What use, he cried, to talk of disarmament until the mind of Europe is changed? “We must have an atmosphere. We must have a confidence. We must have a machinery. An essential condition of securing peace is justice. Justice must be allowed to speak before passion. That is arbitration."

This brings us to the latest efforts to make the Covenant effective. The first of these-the Draft Treaty of Disarmament and Security-is mainly interesting as the work of an influential group of Americans. It was published on the eve of the meeting of the Fifth Assembly, to which it was presented. The most .significant novelty in this scheme was the important position it proposed to assign to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The difficult question of what constitutes an act of aggression was to be decided by the Permanent Advisory Committee of the League, and the principles thus codified were to be applied in each case, not by the Council, but by the Permanent Court, which was to have power to declare whether or no the "international crime" of aggression had been committed. For the rest, the sanction of military pressure was to be secondary to the economic pressure provided for by Article XVI of the Covenant; armaments were to be reduced to the basis necessary for the maintenance of peace and national security; and a committee of the League was to be empowered to visit the various countries to ensure the carrying out of this undertaking. It was to be lawful to enter into separate defensive alliances under the auspices of the League.

*Speech at the Labour Party Conference, Queen's Hall, London, Oct. 7, 1924; The Times, Oct. 8.

The chief interest of this Draft Treaty is that, coming from such a source, it was bound to influence opinion at Geneva, which is very sensitive to any wind blowing from across the Atlantic. Since it was expected that the United States would be represented at the Disarmament Conference in June next, the American project seemed to have a special significance, though it was in no sense official, and some of its provisions are to be found in the Protocol which was the contribution of the Fifth Assembly to the long debate on the problem of security and disarmament.

The Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, which was submitted to the Assembly on October 1st, 1924, is, according to Professor Gilbert Murray, "not a difficult document, but it has to be read in a moderately calm frame of mind, and it cannot be understood without the Covenant, which it is intended to complete and amend" (Times, November 12, 1924). I have read and re-read it in a calm frame of mind, and it remains for me the most difficult document of the kind I have ever been forced to study, a crowning example of the darkness and confusion caused by the invasion of the diplomatic field by an army of jurists. It does not make it easier that it can only be understood if read with the Covenant, " of which an eminent lawyer told me he could not make head or tail."* It cannot be understood without the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice. It has, in short, all the defects of that legislation by reference in which lawyers delight, but which is the despair of the layman. To attempt here any close analysis of the contents of a document so long, so involved, and in itself so obscure, would be impossible. I shall draw attention only to those of its provisions which are new and dangerous departures into the regions of political experiment.

The most important of these are the acceptance by the signatory Powers of the principle of "compulsory" arbitration which in 1920 the Council rejected as a "bold innovation," and the definition of "aggression " as the refusal to accept arbitration in the case of an international dispute or to abide by its result when accepted. This arbitration is to be of two kinds. In the case of "justiciable " disputes the signatories agree to recognise as compulsory, ipso facto, and without special agreement, the jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of International Justice. In

*Lord Sydenham, The Times, Nov. 12, 1924.

the case of non-justiciable disputes, the Council is to do its best to persuade the parties to submit the questions at issue to judicial settlement or arbitration. If one of them agrees to arbitration, the Council is at once to appoint a Committee of Arbitrators. If none of the parties agrees to arbitration, the Council is to take the matter into its own hands and, if it comes to a unanimous decision (the parties to the dispute having no voice), this decision is to be accepted as final. If it fails to agree, it is to refer the matter once more to arbitration, and shall itself determine the composition, the powers and the procedure of the Committee of Arbitrators. The signatory States undertake to carry out in good faith the award arrived at by any of these methods. Should a State, in disregard of these undertakings, resort to war, the sanctions provided by Article XVI of the Covenant shall at once become applicable to it.

These undertakings, the implications of which are worked out in some detail, lead to the definition of "aggression." It is laid down that " every State which resorts to war in violation of the undertakings contained in the Covenant or in the present Protocol is an aggressor," and the signatory Powers agree, without further parley, to join in an economic boycott of the offending State. They further agree to come to the assistance of the threatened member of the League with their armed forces, but in the case of each Power apparently, only "in the degree which its geographical position and its peculiar situation as regards armaments allow."

The Protocol also proposes to extend the jurisdiction of the League beyond its own borders. Article XVI runs as follows:

The signatory States agree that in the event of a dispute between one or more of them and one or more States which have not signed the present Protocol and are not members of the League of Nations, such non-member States shall be invited, on the conditions contemplated in Article XVII of the Covenant, to submit, for the purpose of a pacific settlement, to the obligations accepted by the States signatories of the present Protocol.

If the State so invited, having refused to accept the said conditions and obligations, resorts to war against a signatory State, the provisions of Article XVI of the Covenant, as defined by the present Protocol, shall be applicable to it.

Such are the main provisions of the “Geneva Protocol," on the ratification of which the summoning of the disarmament