The League of Nations

Prevention Is Better Than Cure

HITHERTO, the brilliant little study by Professor J. L. Brierly, The Law of Nations—which has for its sub-title signi- ficantly, An Introduction to the International Law of Peace—has been the only attempt to restate international law in the light of the Covenant. At the- end of last year, however, there was published a study of this " growing jurisprudence " regui- hating international relations*. of which the importance can hardly be exaggerated, especially just now 'when the issue between the organization of peace through co-operation, as we understand it, and the organization of war for the sake of peace, of which the French in particular, but also other Con- tinental peoples, are the unshaken champions, Is crystal-clear.

In depicting the League Council in action, and so defining the legal basis of the Council's authority to safeguard the peace, Mr. T. P. Conwell-Evans has chosen probably the most effective way of convincing the ordinary intelligent person that perhaps after all there is something in the League of Nations. The chief point about this body of law which evolves from the regular day-to-day work of the Geneva executive is that it is organic, that " it is capable of growth, because it is administered by a regularly constitutional organ—the Council of the League—directly representing most of the Governments of the world, and meeting at regular and frequent intervals." In the first ten years of its existence the Council has handled twenty-three international disputes, and its record fully justifies the optimistic contention of General Smuts, voiced both here and in America, that the peace machinery is in excellent working order. If, as some will say, the Covenant is crippled by the defection of the United States, it remains true that in the Kellogg Pact all the nations have subscribed to a solemn pledge to let the peace machinery work.

The book is not by any means easy reading, and I should advise no one to attempt it without a copy of the Covenant in front of him. Mr. Conwell-Evans is able to show that in actual practice the supposition of a wanton aggressor State stubbornly continuing to fight in defiance of the whole League is quite un- warranted. That this assumption dominated the minds of a good many League supporters in every country in the early days must be frankly admitted. To all those trained in the Roman Law—and we must remember that on the Continent the conception of the League is almost exclusively juridical, only in Ang1O-Saxon countries is it conceived in terms of moral Idealism—Some system of military " sanctions " seemed a sine qua non in any scheme of peace. Article 16, 'providing for action if and when a Member of the League should violate any treaty or covenant, was thought of as the substantial means of grace. And when so early as the Second Assembly resolutions were passed that . were designed to weaken that Article, the French took the lead in seeking other means of providing " material guarantees." The Draft Treaties of Mutual Assist- ance (1923), and the Geneva Protocol (1924) were devised by the ingenious jurists, and -then summarily rejected by Great Britain and the Dominion Governments, for by then., although people still had only a dim idea of how the peace machinery would work, they did at least feel that military " sanctions " were only war under another name. From that day to this the centre of gravity has been steadily shifting from the idea of concerted measures of physical force to that of the force embodied in the will of the peoples, to what we loosely call public opinion. " If that will is not for peace," as Mr. Conwell- Evans says, " no machinery, however perfect, can prevent two great. peoples going to war," and he quotes from Professor Brierly, ". no machinery for preserving peace is of much use unless we are entitled to assume, as we probably are, that the vast majority-- of people in every State never want war." So in actual fact Article 11 of the Covenant, which provides for League mediation, has replaced the "criminal " Article of the Covenant, namely Article 16. , _

The Council's action under Article 1-1 has meant in practice :

(a) Immediate intervention by the President of the Council, who issues a warning to the disputants ;

(b) The immediate convocation of the Council to which represen- tatives of the disputants have also been summoned for the purpose of bringing hostilities to an end -; * The League- Council in Action. By T. P. Comvell-Evans. (Oxford University Press. 12s. 6d.) (c) The appointment of a commission of officers to supervise on the spot the cessation of hostilities, or to secure the maintenance of the 'lotus quo, or execute some other provisional arrangement, pending the final settlement of the dispute.

There is one particularly clear instance of the Council lacking authority because the will to peace was conspicuously absent. In the war with Russia, Poland had captured the city of Vilna in April, 1919. It was retaken by the Bolsheviks in July of the following year, and then ceded together with the greater part of the province to the Lithuanians as the price of their support. The fortunes of war changed in August, 1920, and there was the inevitable clash between the Lithuanians and the Poles, and Poland appealed to the League to prevent hostilities between her and Lithuania. Then there ensued a series of mistakes : first of all the Council failed to hold an immediate meeting, and left the matter for its ordinary meeting a fortnight later. Then a provisional frontier was indicated, the Curzon Line which left Vilna in the hands of the Lithuanians. A Military Commission was appointed to be in control of the situation and in constant touch with the Com- mittee of the Council, There was another fortnight's delay, during which Lithuania herself appealed against the threat to Vilna. Then almost immediately after the Commission arrived, General Zeligowski made his famous coup and - cap- tured Vilna for the Poles. Here was a rank failure of the League machinery, due first of all to the fact that the Allied Powers were anxious to see Russia defeated by Poland, and also to the undoubted fact that France was keenly interested in Poland's fortunes.

A simihar failure must be recognized in the Corfu question, when the Council maintained a collective silence in face of Italy's " act of war " against ,Greece—i.e., failed to express its disapproval of the Italian action in defiance of the obligation under Article 12 not to resort to war. - Here again matters of high policy were mainly to blame. At a time when France was occupying the Ruhr as a pledge to obtain satisfaction from Germany respecting reparations, it was hardly likely that a similar action by Italy could be effectively condemned by a representative of France on the Council of the League.

Such failures belong to the early days of the League. Since 1924 on every occasion that the Covenant has been invoked conservatory measures to restore peace have been effectively applied. What those measures are has been suggested by the examples here cited. The classic case is, of course, the Greco- Bulger dispute in the August of 1925, when the Council was very careful to separate the issues. First of all, the " Cease Fire I " was ordered and obeyed, and then the Commission proceeded to the spot to investigate the actual frontier dispute. And the point to notice is that this dispute occurred after the conclusion of the Locarno Treaty, a period when France and Great Britain worked harmoniously together, which probably accounts more than anything else for the clockwork efficacy of the Council's intervention.

Mr. Conwell-Evans has a good deal more to say about League Commissions of Inquiry, about settlements made possible

by the device of Advisory Opinions obtained from the Permanent Court of International Justice ; about the Council's direct methods of mediation, as illustrated by the Hungarian Optants dispute and the partition of Upper Silesia

—another unsatisfactory settlement which belongs to the abnormal period when the League was still in its experimental stage. But nothing in this book is more important than the author's inference—it is hardly more than that—that the co- operation of France and Great Britain is essential to the effective working of the peace machinery. The present British Government is fortunately no less conscious than was Sir Austen Chamberlain of the need to move forward with France, and if only our political leaders will use such

a compelling lecon de chases as we have in this book, we may safely look forward to the day when Article 16 will perish from

inanition and the fact that security is nine-tenths psychological Will be appreciated no less in war-ridden Europe than it is in the more academic effusions of` Anglo-Saxons.

NV. H. C.