The Framework or. the League
The desire of the deliberators at Dumbarton Oaks to acquaint the public with their decisions whenever possible is laudable, but it cannot be said that the information imparted on behalf of the Con- ference by Mr. Edward Stettinius on Tuesday adds substantially to the sum of human knowledge. It has, we are told, been agreed that the new international organisation shall consist of an Assembly, attended by representatives of all member-States ; a Council, of which some States will be permanent members and some temporary; and a Court of International Justice. This is satisfactory in so far as it shows that the Conference has followed the dictates both of common sense and of experience, but in fact no one has ever seriously conceived of a League, or whatever it may be termed, which did not include an Assembly, a Council and a Court of Justice. What matters are the practical details, if questions so important are to be described as details, on which the Conference is now to con- centrate,—the respective powers of the Assembly and Council, the number of permanent and temporary members of the latter, the majority required for effective decisions on issues that may involve armed action, the question of whether the League is to have a permanent military force of any kind at its disposal, the relation of its general responsibility for repressing aggression with the respon- sibility of the United Nations for keeping particular aggressors, primarily Germany, repressed. It is by its decisions on these matters that the Conference will stand or fall.
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