The League of Nations Dropping the Customs Union Plan M.
NICOLAS TITLTLESCO of Rumania, on whom the League of Nations Assembly has conferred the honour of election to its presidency for a second year in succession, impressed on the Assembly in his opening speech the need for four qualities : confidence, prudence, action, and a readiness for sacrifice. Insistence on the need for prudence seems less apposite this year than most, for the League of Nations was never in less danger of plunging into rash adventure. A glimpse of some adventure to plunge into would be almost welcome, for the pervading sensation in these opening days of the Assembly is of the spread to Geneva of the general malaise from which every country that sends delegates to the League city is suffering.
There is plenty of time yet for optimism to be restored, and with justification. Something will be very wrong some- where if we can have the four Prime Ministers and twenty-six Foreign Ministers who, the statisticians assure us, were gathered in the Assembly Hall on Monday morning, all together under one roof and M. Titulesco's demand for action not be satisfied. But of anticipatory signs of its satisfaction there are none. Would it have been reasonable to expect them ? It would, for the League Council was in session six days, and the European Commission four days, before the Assembly met at all. The Commission which launched so ambitious a programme at its last meeting in March, might well have produced something in the shape of a definite plan to lay before the full Assembly this week. It has, it is true, produced a report. That report, it is true, does embody several very admirable principles. But they are not principles that promise any immediate or effective action.
That would matter less if the need for action in Europe were not urgent. Often the gradual assimilation of sound principles is the first condition of real progress. And when the Commission's sub-committee of economic experts lays it down explicitly that "the ultimate goal must be the widest possible collaboration of the nations of Europe in the sense of making Europe a single market for the products of any and every country in it," and the full commission embodies the recommendation as it stands in its own report to the Assembly, it is hard not to feel that at any rate eyes are being set in the right direction. But this is a case not merely for turning eyes but turning feet towards the goal, and there is nothing to suggest yet that the feet are not as stationary as ever.
Paradoxically, indeed, the main achievement of the past week has been negative, not positive. The interment of the Austro-German customs union project may be attributed broadly and euphemistically to the force of circumstances, for which some commentators at any rate would substitute, as a serviceable synonym, pressure from France. That is not entirely fair criticism. France, of course, was bitterly opposed. to the project from the first. That is a matter of common knowledge. So is Austria's desperate need of a loan. Sa is France's ability to furnish or help to furnish a loan. It needed not a word of overt ultimatum or even of overt suasion by France to convince Austria of the hopelessness of looking to Paris for help so long as the customs union plan was being pushed forward. And as Germany could not go forward with the plan without Austria, and France's financial position armed her with arguments valid in Berlin too, there was nothing for it but for Dr. Curtius and Dr. Schober to display the same common devotion in despatching the plan as they had some seven months earlier in bringing it to birth.
The form of their obituary declarations was admirable, and full appreciation of their statesmanship was expressed by Signor Grandi and Lord Cecil. But no one realized for a moment how much there was to be thankful for till the verdict of the Permanent Court of International Justice on the legality of the customs union plan was issued two days later. By that time, most fortunately, the plan was in its grave. If it had had a spark of life in it the League Council would have been confronted with a crisis of the first magnitude. For the Court veidict, so far from settling the question, left it more unsettled than any serious student of the possibilities would have thought conceivable.
Examine the verdict for a moment. A Court of fifteen judges was asked two questions. Is the proposed plan consistent with Article 88 of the Treaty of St. Germain ? Is it consistent with the Protocol signed at Geneva in 1922 ? Of the fifteen judges eight said it was not consistent with the Protocol and seven said it was. The seven said it was also consistent with the Treaty, and one of the eight joined them in this, so that eight judges to seven acquitted Austria of any violation of the Treaty. But still eight to seven convicted her of a violation of the Protocol, though one of the majority, Signor Anzilotti, dissented completely from his colleagues' reasoning and reached the same conclusion as they did by a totally different route. That was enough to non-suit Austria technically, though when it comes to a moral judgement no one can fail to recognize that the combined authority of the seven, including as they did men like Mr. Kellogg, Sir Cecil Hurst, M. Adatci and M. Van Eysinga, decisively outweighed the combined authority of the eight. To rule out the customs union solely on the strength of the Court's verdict would have been impossible, and it would have been equally impossible for Dr. Schober to have withdrawn the plan when the Court had come within a hairsbreadth of justifying it. Fortunately he acted just forty-eight hours before the verdict was given, and so the situation is saved.
There is a temptation to dwell at length on the Court's ruling and its implications, not for Germany and Austria but for the Court itself. The suggestion that the majority judges were influenced by political motives may be dis- missed at once. They may or may not have been. So, for that matter, may the minority. But it is perfectly certain that the most conscientious judge who ever lived might as easily and as honestly have come down on one side as on the other of so doubtful and complicated a question as this. What really emerges is doubt as to the wisdom of encouraging a Court whose strength lies in its detachment from political entanglements to rule on a question in which politics and law are inextricably intermingled. Signor Anzilotti faced that question squarely in his brilliant dissenting opinion. " Every- thing," he said, " points to the fact that the answer depends on considerations which are for the most part, if not entirely, of a political and economic kind. . . . That being the ease the conclusion at which I have arrived after much careful reflection is that the Court must either refuse to give the opinion asked for or it must give it on the question as a whole."
Obviously a great deal more will be heard of this discussion on the limits of the Court's jurisdiction, and Signor Anzilotti's declaration is likely to be taken as the starting-point of most of the arguments. Meanwhile, all that need be said here is that Americans at Geneva are convinced that at the moment when the long-delayed entry of the United States into the Court seemed imminent the Court verdict on the Austro- German question will play directly into the hands of those opponents who are always proclaiming that to go into the Court means going into European politics. So far as the customs union itself is concerned, both Dr. Curtius and Dr. Schober took the line that they were dropping it voluntarily in the interests of some larger scheme of European union. That larger scheme has not emerged or shown signs of emerging. Possibly the general discussion in the Assembly this week will point the way to it. Possibly M. Briand, who did not reach Geneva till the European Committee had finished its sessions, has some new inspiration to impart. But hopes at present are not running high.
As to the Assembly generally, M. Titulesco's election is sa far the chief point of note, for he is the first president to be chosen for a second successive year. There is something to be said for distributing honours, but on the whole more to be said for giving the Assembly the most efficient chairman possible. And M. Titulesco is certainly the most efficient occupant of the Chair discovered up till now.
YOUR GENEVA CORRESPONDENT.
Previous page
