Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

parts of the world the large promise of Article X in respect to either its letter or its spirit. No one now expects the League Council to try to summon armies and fleets, since it utterly failed to obtain even an international police force for the Vilna district.

Each assembly of the League has witnessed vigorous efforts to interpret and modify Article X. In the Fourth Assembly an attempt to adopt an interpretation of that Article in essential agreement with the Senatorial reservation on the same subject in 1920 was blocked only by a small group of weak States like Persia and Panama, which evidently attributed to Article X a protective power that it possesses only on

paper.

Such States, in possible fear of unfriendly neighbors, must decide whether the preservation of a form of words in the Covenant is more vital to their peace and security, and to the peace and security of the world, than the presence of the United States at the council table of the family of nations.

As to Article XVI, the Council of the League created a Blockade Commission which worked for two years to determine how the "economic weapon" of the League could be efficiently used and uniformly applied. The Commission failed to discover any obligatory procedure that weaker Powers would dare to accept. It was finally agreed that each State must decide for itself whether a breach of the Covenant has been committed.

The Second Assembly adopted a radically amended form of Article XVI from which was removed all reference to the possibility of employing military force, and in which the abandonment of uniform obligation was directly provided for. The British Government has since proposed to weaken the form of requirement still further.

Articles X and XVI, in their original forms, have therefore been practically condemned by the principal organs of the League and are today reduced to something like innocuous desuetude. The only kind of compulsion which nations can

freely engage to apply to each other in the name of peace is that which arises from conference, from moral judgment, from full publicity, and from the power of public opinion.

THE LEADERSHIP OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE NEW WORLD IS OBVIOUSLY Recognized by THE LEAGUE

Another significant development in the constitutional practice of the League is the unwillingness of the League Council to intervene in any American controversy, even though all States in the New World except three are members of the League.

This refusal became evident in the Panama-Costa Rica dispute in 1921 and in the quarrel between Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, a quarrel which impelled the last two States to absent themselves from the Third Assembly, wherein a Chilean was chosen to preside.

Obviously the League intends to recognize the leadership of the United States in the New World precisely as the United States claims it. This is nothing less than the observance of an unwritten law limiting the powers and duties of the League Council, defined in Article XI of the Covenant, to questions that seem to threaten the peace of the Old World. When the United States is willing to bring the two halves of the world together for friendly consideration of common dangers, duties and needs, it will be possible to secure, if it is desired, closer cooperation between the League organizations and the Pan American Union, already a potential regional league. It is conceivable that the family of nations may eventually clearly define certain powers and duties of relatively local significance which may be devolved upon local associations or unions. But the world of business and finance is already unified. The worlds of scientific knowledge and humane effort are nearly so. Isolation of any kind is increasingly impossible, and world organization, already centralized, is no more likely to return to disconnected effort than the United States is likely to revert to the Calhoun theory of States' Rights and Secession.

IN ACTUAL OPERATION, IF NOT IN ORIGINAL CONCEPTION, THE LEAGUE REALIZES THE PRINCIPLE AND THE

HOPES OF THE HAGUE CONFERENCES

The operation of the League has therefore evolved a Council widely different from the body imagined by the makers of the Covenant. It can employ no force but that of persuasion and moral influence. Its only actual powers are to confer and advise, to create commissions, to exercise inquisitive, conciliative and arbitral functions, and to help elect judges of the Permanent Court.

In other words the force of circumstances is gradually moving the League into position upon the foundations so well laid by the world's leaders between 1899 and 1907 in the great international councils of that period. The Assemblies of the League and the Congresses of the International Labor Organizations are successors to the Hague Conferences.

The Permanent Court has at least begun to realize the highest hope and purpose of the Second Hague Conference.

The Secretariat and the Labor Office have become Continuation Committees for the administrative work of the organized world, such as the Hague Conferences lacked resources to create but would have rejoiced to see.

The Council, resolving loose and large theories into cleancut and modest practice, has been gradually reconciling the League, as an organized world, with the ideals of international interdependence, temporarily obscured since 1914 by the shadows of the Great War.

No one can deny that the organs of the League have brought to the service of the forces behind those ideals an efficiency, scope and variety of appeal that in 1914 would have seemed incredible.

It is common knowledge that public opinion and official policy in the United States have for a long time, without distinction of party, been favorable to international conferences for the common welfare, and to the establishment of conciliative, arbitral and judicial means for settling international disputes.

There is no reason to believe that the judgment and policy have been changed. Along these same lines the League is now plainly crystallizing, as has been shown, and at the touch of the United States the process can be expedited.

In no other way can the organized world, from which the United States cannot be economically and spiritually separated, belt the power of public opinion to the new machinery, devised for the pacific settlement of controversies between nations and standing always ready for use.

THE UNITED STATES SHOULD PARTICIPATE IN the League's WORK UNDER STATED CONDITIONS

The United States Government should be authorized to propose cooperation with the League and participation in the work of its Assembly and Council under the following conditions and reservations.

I. The United States accepts the League of Nations as an instrument of mutual counsel, but it will assume no obligation to interfere with political questions of policy or internal administration of any foreign State.

THE UNITED STATES WILL MAINTAIN THE

MONROE DOCTRINE

In uniting its efforts with those of other States for the preservation of peace and the promotion of the common welfare, the United States does not abandon its traditional attitude concerning American independence of the Old World and does not consent to submit its long-established policy concerning questions regarded by it as purely American to the recommendation or decision of other Powers.

THE UNITED STATES PROPOSES THAT MORAL JUDGMENT AND PUBLIC OPINION BE SUBSTITUTED FOR FORCE

II. The United States will assume no obligations under Article X, in its present form in the Covenant, unless in any particular case Congress has authorized such action.

The United States will assume no obligations under Article XVI, in its present form in the Covenant or in its amended form as now proposed, unless in any particular case Congress has authorized such action.

The United States proposes that Articles X and XVI be either dropped altogether or so amended and changed as to eliminate any suggestion of a general agreement to use coercion for obtaining conformity to the pledges of the Covenant.

The United States Will Assume No OBLIGATIONS UNDER THE VERSAILLES TREATY

III. The United States Government will accept no responsibility and assume no obligation in connection with any duties imposed upon the League by the peace treaties, unless in any particular case Congress has authorized such action.

THE UNITED STATES PROPOSES THAT ADMISSION BE
ASSURED TO ANY SELF-GOVERNING STATE

IV. The United States Government proposes that Article I of the Covenant be construed and applied, or, if necessary, redrafted, so that admission to the League shall be assured to any self-governing State that wishes to join and that receives the favorable vote of two-thirds of the Assembly.

THE CONTINUING DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNATIONAL Law MUST BE PROVIDED FOR

V. As a further condition of its participation in the work and counsels of the League, the United States asks that the Assembly and Council consent or obtain authority-to begin collaboration for the revision and development of international law, employing, for this purpose, the aid of a commission of jurists. This commission would be directed to formulate anew existing rules of the law of nations, to reconcile divergent opinions, to consider points hitherto

« ÎnapoiContinuă »