The Functions of International Organizations

The Basis of International Organizations

I ARGUED in an earlier Article of this website that the scale of modern civilization has made the national and sovereign State an institutional expedient of which the political un-wisdom and moral danger are both manifest. We are committed to international experiment by the facts about us. We have been driven to recognize the economic interdependence of States. We have come to see that outside purely domestic concerns settlement in terms of common rules is the only method likely to make possible satisfactory international arrangements and functions of international organizations.

The experience of what world-conflict has involved seems to have convinced the best of this generation that the effective outlaw of war is the only reasonable alternative to suicide. We have realized, moreover, that politics includes economics, and that the consequences of a world-market are the settlement in common of those matters of common concern which arise from the fact of a world-market. Since, that is to say, matters like the supply of raw materials, or tariffs, or emigration, affect the world as a whole, no State can be a law unto itself in laying down the rules which obtain in relation to them. International control of some kind and degree is postulated wherever a given State-function directly impinges upon the common life of States.

It was, of course, this perception which led to the inclusion, in the Peace of Versailles, of the Covenant of the League of Nations. I have not here to deal with the grave defects of that instrument in its original form. I do not need to argue since conviction upon the point is general that the effectiveness of the League depends very largely upon the degree of its inclusiveness that, consequently, the absence of States like Russia and America is fatal to the proper fulfillment of its purposes. Nor need I dwell upon the purely technical issue of whether the League is juristically a superstate or merely an association of sovereign nations.

I believe myself that it is in essence quite demonstrably the former and that this character will become increasingly obvious as its functioning becomes more adequate. For it has, in fact, the power to bind its members and there are already spheres of activity within its ambit of authority in which evasion of the obligations it creates are, if not theoretically impossible, at least sufficiently difficult to be impossible in practice. But the notion that State sovereignty in international affairs is, in truth obsolete still troubles a generation inflamed by the fever of national prejudice and it is both wiser, and more fruitful, to approach the problems of international organization from a different angle.

That angle is the discussion of the functions it has to perform and the organs necessary to the performance of those functions. By the analysis of their nature we are much more likely to grasp the character of that which reconciles nationalism with civilization than if we commit ourselves to the dissection of purely abstract ideas. Broadly Speaking, matters of common concern in modern civilization can be divided into three general categories. There are political problems, there are economic problems, there are social problems.

I do not, of course, suggest either that these categories are exhaustive, or that they do not often enough shade off into one another. But, as a rule, the great majority of the questions we have to solve fall fairly reasonably within one or another of them. I shall try to list the main subjects which fall within each, and to say something about their significance as matters of common concern. One general observation may, however, be made. There are many problems of which the incidence concerns mainly two or three States, in which the general international interest is both small and remote of which a good instance is the work of the International Commission which controls the traffic of the Danube.

The solution of such problems can always be confided to the parties predominantly concerned upon two conditions: it must be reached in a public manner and its substance and the administration of that substance must be approved by, and open to the inspection of, the general international authority. The League of Nations, that is to say, is not likely to become a State in the normal sense of the word. It will concern itself less with direct administration than with propounding, or accepting, solutions which will be administered by others. It will, therefore, be a source of principle rather than an agent of action though it will, as I shall show later, have to be regarded as the ultimate reserve force in society from which, in the last resort, definite action originates.

The Functions  of International Organizations in political issue

I take first of all the political functions of the League of Nations  and we may first discuss those among its political functions of which the international significance is unquestionable. It is clear

(I) that all treaties must be registered with the League, whatever their extent and nature.

This is necessary, not only because of their possible effect upon other States, which, by the fact of registration, are able to raise the question of their substance before the League, but also because secrecy in international arrangements is fatal to the atmosphere of peace. There are, moreover, certain types of treaty which are, a prion obnoxious, which must, therefore, be rendered invalid by the action of the League. Treaties, for instance, in which one State binds itself to joint military action with another, as France practically bound herself to joint military action with Russia before 1914, are indefensible.

I do not, of course, argue that to make registration compulsory will ensure that Secret arrangements are obviated. But if only publicly registered and internationally approved treaties are sanctioned by the League, the revelation of arrangements which their makers had attempted to conceal is likely to make those arrangements less effective than they would otherwise be. Had the precise terms of the Anglo-French entente of 1904 been revealed when they were made, it would have been much more difficult to secure the atmosphere of war in 1914. Secrecy breeds suspicion, and suspicion is the nurse of fear. The result of compelling publicity is to throw  the onus of a grave offense upon power which, even in the insisting atmosphere, do not like to brave the hostile opinion of the world. And such publicity makes possible the necessary provision that no treaty should be regarded as valid until within three months from its publication by the League. For we then have a period in which States affected by the new arrangements may protest against them if they are adversely allotted. That is, I think, a legitimate matter for appeal to the Council of the League.

(2) Boundaries.

The authority of the League should always be invoked in fixing boundaries. Where the States concerned are in agreement upon the line to be drawn, the League may be no more than a source of approval. Where the problem, as with Poland and Germany, is a, debatable one, the authority of the League is the only source of a m reasonably impartial solution. It is, moreover, through the League only that there can adequately be worked out that system of neutral zones through which we may hope to avoid the difficulties which arise from considerations of strategy. Take, for example, a definitely German territory like the Rhineland.

It is unquestionably a source of danger to French security through the opportunities it offers for invasion. If it could be neutralized in a military sense, neither the political nor the economic interests of Germany need suffer. But such demilitarization can only be effected through the agency of an impartial authority. And, as a rule, the making of boundaries, as in the Balkans, involves the weighing of social and national considerations which are interpreted differently according to the State which makes the interpretation.

The League of Nations is the best assurance we have that the changes effected will be reasonable. The assurance, indeed, is not complete for the plebiscite in Silesia was fragrantly violated by the solution of the League itself. In general, it is probable, the League must make for itself a self-denying ordinance that all boundaries which seek to settle problems of racial affinity must go by majority-rule and the actual voting must be carried out with safeguards of secrecy as complete as those of an English general election.

(3) Disarmament.

Ideally, the solution of the disarmament question is a position where no State possesses more armed forces than are necessary for the problems of internal police as a matter of practice, that solution is Utopian at the present time. But our experience of national competition in the scale of armaments has already taught us some obvious lessons. It has shown that preparation against war is no safeguard against war that, on the contrary, preparation is the inevitable prelude to war. The history of Anglo German naval rivalry is in this regard final. And it is clear that unless there is some agreed and proportionate method of defense under the auspices of the League, observance of which is a condition of continued membership, there is no proper protection against the atmosphere of suspicion which arises out of the uncontrolled power to arm.

What principles, then, of control may be said to emerge from our recent experience ? They are, I suggest five in number.

(I) No  State should be permitted to maintain a conscript army. The training of the adult population to arms is tantamount to an invitation to the powerful State to use its forces for the extension of its influence. It is clear that the relation between the numbers of French and German citizens was, in the atmosphere of conscription, one of the contributory causes in the war of 1914. The maintenance of a purely professional army operates to demilitarize the habits of the general population. It follows of course, that such unpaid troops as the British Territorial Army should likewise be prohibited.

(2) The manufacture of armaments, whether naval or military  in nature, should be confined to governments. Anyone at all intimately acquainted with the history of the armaments “ring” before 1914 I will have realized the disastrous results of allowing private Enterprise live by the belligerent habits they can induce in governments and it is clear, even after the war, that the new States created by the Peace of Versailles are dragged by the inherent vices of the system into a kindred atmosphere. The manufacture of munitions in Austria was forbidden by the Treaty of Trianon but there seems no doubt that armaments have been made there for the use of the now independent succession States.

(3) It is necessary further, to prohibit the manufacture of certain types of armament, of which an obvious illustration is poison gas There is, doubtless, an irony almost as savage as that of Swift in the notion of civilizing warfare. But no one who has seen the effects, say, of poison gas, or of the bombardment of unfortified towns, especially from the air, can doubt that they release barbarians fatal to the elementary decencies of human nature. And the greater the advance of science the more disastrous are the consequences of such usage. The matter has become serious enough to affect the whole future of the human race for if this inventiveness is unchecked, and the chemist, for example, has a period of thirty years in which to perfect his discoveries, the effects of war will be to reduce civilization to a shambles in which decency will have become a legend.

(4) There must be agreed scales of armament between States on the basis partly of population, and, partly, of the volume and area of trade to be defended. Such a rationing of permissible armament does not, of course, seriously diminish the possibility of war at the best it merely decreases the cost of war in time of peace. But it has the very great value of making the scale of defense public and the result of that publicity is to lower the dangerous suspicions out of which and upon which the atmosphere of war emerges. It releases public funds, moreover for pacific purposes and that is a consequence which, particularly in the sphere of education has contingently unlimited importance.

(5) It is vital that no naval or military bases should be built with out the specific approval of the League. It is clear that such efforts as the fortification of Heligoland by Germany or of Singapore by Great Britain, raises questions of far more than merely domestic significance. Had Lord Salisbury foreseen the future of Heligoland, he would never have exchanged it for Zanzibar and a fortified Singapore is inevitably regarded by Japan as a menace to her safety. If States with outlying possessions are to proliferate fortifications over the world, it is obvious that their neighbors will be compelled to retort in kind, and we shall be threatened with a new form of competition in armaments not less menacing than those of the past. If there is a good case for a naval dock at Singapore, Great Britain ought to be able to make out that case before an independent tribunal. To leave her with the final power to decide is to violate,  ab imtio every principle of international organization.

Once it is conceded that disarmament is a matter for the League the method of securing the observance of these principles becomes important. Clearly, no ordinary executive could expect to cope with the problems to which they give rise. They involve the existence of a standing body of experts who shall report from time to time to the League upon their application. To report, they must have the right to inspect and to inspect, they must have the right of entry. The League, therefore, must have beneath its executive body a Disarmament Commission charged with the supervision of these functions. It will, of course, be a commission of inquiry and not of action it will do only what it is authorized to do by its superiors And such a functional body within the League serves as a type of administrative authority which will doubtless have to be created for not a few purposes.

It will act as an eye for the League. It will render its observations independent of the material supplied to it by the States which might, conceivably, be interested in evading their obligations. I do not imply that such a Commission will prevent evasion, any more than the criminal law prevents murders from being committed. But at least it will serve as a safeguard against them.

(6) Treatment of Minorities, racial and religious-Not the least urgent problem raised in an acute form in the nineteenth century, and accentuated by the provisions of the Peace of Versailles, is that which is raised by the fact that no geographical boundaries, however drawn, can possibly give territorial autonomy to each group of persons claiming distinctive characteristics nor, on economic grounds, would such separation be desirable. It is, accordingly, important that minorities should be guaranteeing the possession of those rights without which, as I have sought to show above, a creative life is impossible. They are not attained merely by the insertion of a Bill of Rights in a constitution. In Poland and Roumania, in Hungary and Jugo-Siavia, equality before the law has neither existed nor has effort been made to ensure its existence. The only way in which it can be made real is to offer to these minorities the protection of the League. What rights that protection should safeguard varies, naturally, from State to State. In some countries, it involves linguistic protection Germans do not desire to be coerced into speaking Czech or Polish.

In others it is religious protection which is important, Roumanian Jews do not wish to be excluded from universities because their faith is different from that of the general population. What seems necessary, in general, is the establishment of a minority’s right to protest to the League against its treatment, with a consequent duty on the part of the League to investigate complaints which seem substantial. Such an investigation ought to involve recommendations after hearings, and it should be an obligation inherent in membership of the League that any State to which such recommendations have to be sent undertakes to carry them out in principle and detail. 

Can the League enforce its recommendations upon an unwilling State P To the point of making war to that end, obviously such enforcement is likely to be, for some time, impossible. But it could, I think, insist that any State which failed to carry them out as a matter of deliberate policy could be subjected to economic boycott. It could be prevented from raising loans abroad its securities could be removed from the lists quoted in the Bourses of foreign powers and in extremely bad cases it might be prohibited from trade with those powers. Suspension from membership of the League is also a penalty of a useful kind for that would be an announcement that the recalcitrant power had defied the public opinion of the world.

 It is a question of much interest as to when the treatment of subject-minorities moves over from being a domestic issue to being one of which the League must take account. Suppose, for example, that Egypt or India appealed to the League, as Ireland appealed to the Peace Conference in 1919. Suppose that the Philippines, or Haiti, or San Domingo asked the League for assistance against what, rightly or wrongly, they believed to be maltreatment by the United States. We in instances such as these, is the duty of the League prior question must here be asked. What is to be taken as an appeal from Egypt or Ireland or India? Obviously some discontented minority  association has not the right to be business is, as it best may  to become a majority in the  community it seeks to represent. An official appeal must I think, be taken to mean an appeal from a majority of members representing the minority concerned in the elected assembly of the given State.

If they complain of oppression, it should, I think, be the duty of the League to investigate their alleged grievances. The only case against that view is that which rests upon prestige. England did not, in 1919, like the idea of its relations with Ireland being investigated by foreigners the United States wants independence to come to the Philippines at a time of her own choosing. But a case built only upon prestige is, I think, one that is into possible to maintain. No people, as Sir Henry Campbelb Bannerman said, is ever good enough to govern another people and if the latter’s elected representatives combine to protest against their suzerainty there is at least a prime facie case for investigation.

 In such cases it should, i suggest, he the function of the League to make independent inquiry. Clearly, all such investigations must be ad hoc investigations and they must take the form of general recommendations which are not binding in character. No League of Nations which ordered England to Withdraw from India or Japan to surrender Korea. could hope to enforce its views the most it can attempt is the publication of conclusions and suggestions. And if that work is effectively done, it will be difficult for any government to resist the accretion of public opinion about such a report.

It will, moreover, serve another important purpose. Half the difficulties which face the modern world come iron our ignorance of foreign affairs and much of what knowledge we believe ourselves to possess is in fact a system of inductions from tendentious reports. Englishmen naturally believe that India is well governed because they govern it themselves Indians, equally naturally, believe that their exclusion from supreme control is a cause of misgovern. Only genuinely independent inquiry can awaken either to the other’s point of View. But it is important that the inquiry should be genuinely independent. It is no use sending a Roman Catholic to inquire into Hungary’s treatment of its minorities or an Anglo-Indian civilian to report upon the future of the Philippines. Bias and error we shall doubtless always have: but the League must take pains to see that they are, at their minimum

(7) The Treatment of Backward Peoples-Closely connected with the problem of minorities is that of subject races. Here, the League has already acknowledged a measure of responsibility by insistence upon the mandate system for colonies and territories which, as a result of the war of 1914, have been handed over to the victors in that conflict. By Article of the Covenant of the League certain principles of government have been laid down. These territories are divided into three general groups. In the first, of which Iraq and Palestine are examples, the community is recognized as  having reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized but they must receive the advice and assistance of the Mandatory Power in matters of administration.

The latter, broadly speaking, may regard them as a temporary protectorate. In the second group, the territory becomes what is, in the British Empire. Crown Colony without representative institutions. The Mandatory Power guarantees religious freedom. It agrees to enforce the prohibition of slavery and the slave trade of the liquor traffic and the sale of arms and to protect the interest of the natives in all transactions about land. It agrees not to establish fortifications or naval and military bases and to train the natives in arms no further than is necessary for police and defense. Freedom of trade is also secured.

Togoland and the Cameroons are examples of this type of mandate. The third class is of territories which, either because of their small size, like Nauru or their thin population, like South-West Africa, are integrally absorbed into the territory of the Mandatory Power, and become subject to such laws as it chooses to make. In all three classes the Mandatory Power must make an annual report on its work to the League and the latter has established a Permanent Mandates Commission of nine members, five of whom belong to non-mandatory, and four to mandatory States to watch in detail over the operation of the system. None of these members moreover, who sit for the Mandatory States, must be in the employ of the governments concerned.

No one can deny that these principles represent, in general, a great advance upon methods so far suggested for the government of native races. Anyone who compares them, for example, with the principles actually involved in the penetration of the African continent  will realize that the possibility of a new atmosphere has been created. But, it may be suggested, there is still a great gulf fixed between the principles adumbrated and the measures taken to ensure their application. The annual report is made by the Mandatory Power the State to be scrutinized, that is to say, reports from time to time that its conduct has been good and the attitude of South Africa over the Bondelwarts rebellion will make most independent observers a little dubious whether such reports are the best way to the goal in view.

There are, in fact, two quite obvious ways in which they can be supplemented. There should, in the first place, be accredited to each mandated territory of the League a commissioner who will act as its ambassador upon the spot. He should belong always to a different State from that of the Mandatory Power. It should be his business to keep watch upon its work, and independently to report upon it to the League. All regulations made by the Mandatory Power should be referred to him for approval, and, in the event of his disagreement, they should be confirmed or denied by the Permanent Mandates Commission. Where trouble occurs, as in the Bondelwarts rebellion, it should be his function to make an independent judicial inquiry and to report directly to the League as early as possible after the outbreak.

He should himself always speak the most usual language of the territory, and have an independent staff speaking the languages of the different peoples. Thereby the League would possess an independent and continuous check upon the work of the Mandatory Powers its discussion of their work would not be based mainly, as now, upon what the latter had chosen to tell them. It could really investigate trouble whereas, at present, if it chose to make investigation, most of the relevant evidence would already have perished. Dead natives do not differ from other men in being able to tell no tales. It may be added that there is no reason why the mandate system should not be extended to all territories in which the native races predominate. Every reason for League control of Togoland is a reason for League control of Kenya and there is already provision in the Covenant whereby this extension ,might without difficulty be made.

Such a system of inspection, I believe, is of the first importance but it will not by itself guarantee adequacy, Not less important is the quality of the personnel engaged in the administration of mandates. The League cannot of course, control appointments to the colonial service of a Mandatory Power but it can, if necessary, and after appropriate investigation, demand disciplinary measures, including dismissal from the service, of  persons so appointed.  It can, further, insist that no person shall be appointed to the service without an adequate training in ethnology and anthropology, and ability to speak the language of the territory he is to administer.

It is the clear lesson of research that ability to understand native customs is essential to wise administration in these matters and only a genius can hope to learn them by rule of thumb on the spot. It is important, further, to see that no white settlers engaged in Commerce should possess judicial powers. They are there for profit, and it is obvious from the history of commerce in such territories that the trader cannot be trusted to do justice to the native. Nor, so far as possible, should forced labor be permitted certainly the native should never be hired out over a period in which specific performance is enforced to private persons. The matter is different where public works, like the making of roads, are concerned. But the general rule that labor employed should be normal wage labor is a principle of great importance.

(8) Aggression, Wars and Disputes- The value of the League of Nations depends clearly upon its power to prevent war. Let us examine the provisions already made in the Covenant for the peaceful settlement of disputes. Each member, in the first place, guarantees both the territory and the existing independence of all other members of the League against external aggression and it is the function of the Council of the League to advise upon the methods of fulfilling this obligation. I far or the threat of war is secondly a matter of concern to the League, whether its members are affected or not and when such emergency arises, the Council of the League is to be summoned forthwith. Every member of the League has the friendly right to bring to the attention either of the Assembly or the Council circumstances tending to disturb international peace.

I In the event of dispute between members of the League, they agree, if the dispute seems suitable to arbitration or judicial settlement, to submit the problem to such settlement if the ordinary diplomatic channels fail and they agree not to resort to war until three months after the award under such a settlement has been made, the period of that award being six months at a maximum from the submission of the dispute to the Council.

The members of the League agree to carry out the terms of an award in good faith, and failure involves action against the recalcitrant member by the Councils! For the purpose of such arbitration a permanent International Court of Justice has been created. But, obviously, the root of the matter lies in disputes which members of the League are not prepared to submit to arbitration. In that event, the members agree to submit the matter to the Council, and submission is effected by one of the parties to the dispute giving notice thereof to the Secretary General of the League. Preparations are then made for full inquiry, and the Council seeks the means of settlement.

If it fails, it makes, either unanimously or by a majority, a report of conclusions and recommendations and dissenting members are entitled to publish a minority report If the report of the Council is unanimous and one party to the dispute agrees with it, the members of the League pledge themselves not to make war upon that party. If no unanimous report is issued, the parties remain free to take individual action. The Council does not act when the subject of a dispute is found to be of a domestic and not at an international nature and it may, it it think tit, refer the dispute to the Assembly of the League which then acts in the place, and with the powers of the Council, so long as the member States on the Council and a majority of the Assembly concur in the report. In all such decisions, of course, the parties concerned in the dispute do not take a voting part.

So much is already League-law, binding upon its members and, before we discuss the method of its enforcement, it is perhaps well to see how far it takes us. The Covenant provides machinery for the settlement of disputes which do not raise the difficult problems of prestige particularly, it makes permanently justifiable problems which arise out of treaties or international law. It compels settlement in none justifiable disputes where the Council is unanimous, but it still leaves open the door to war where there is disagreement on the Council. No one, I think, can deny that work of some significance has already been done under these provisions. Certainly the issues between Finland and Sweden over the Aaland Islands, and between Jugo-Slavia and Albania, over the northern frontier of the latter States, were settled promptly and fairly by these means.

That, however, which arose between Greece and Italy in the summer of 1923, and resulted in the bombardment by Italy of Corfu, is evidence that the utilization of these provisions is no easy matter. Sanctions apart, it is clear that they need supplement, especially in the direction of a definition of what disputes are justifiable, and how an aggressor in the case of conflict is to be defined. The provisions, moreover, do not bind nonmembers of the League, and the position of two of these powers, America and Russia, may be decisive in the future of civilization.

Let me take these points separately. It  I think, urgent in the interests of peace that it be emphasized in the regulations of the League that there is no such thing as a dispute not capable: of settlement either by an international court of justice pr by arbitration. For immediately a nation: State assumes that a given issue touches its honor, and it cannot, therefore, submit itself to an international jurisdiction, it is, in fact, adopting the same mental attitude as the protagonist in a private duel. Austrian “honor” was not vindicated in 1914, by making war upon Servia Italian “honour” was not vindicated in 1923 by bombarding Corfu. In each case real issues were evaded by being enveloped in a miasma of prestige which prevented their exploration in terms of the facts they involved.

The conception that a nation-State which either commits wrong, or believes itself to be wrong, can make its own law, represents a faith as outworn as, and infinitely more dangerous than, the creed which assumed that an insulted aristocrat of the eighteenth century could only vindicate himself by blood. The national honor as Mr. Veblen has well said  “moves in the realm of magic, and touches the frontiers of religion.” For no one seriously believes that an outraged corporate personality is made whole again by any of the ways involved in the code of diplomatic procedure. The common man does not, as a rule, even know that it has been outraged until his patriotism is appealed to by methods which frequently lose sight of the facts which are said to constitute outrage. And if honor, being dissatisfied in terms of punctilio, then proceeds to war, the common man may pay the penalty in terms which go far beyond any price commensurate with the original sin. I believe, therefore, that it is necessary to define the jurisdiction of the League over disputes much more broadly than is now the case.

(I) It must not only have jurisdiction, as now, over disputes susceptible of legal decision, or by agreed arbitration, or by settlement in terms of unanimous decision by the Council, of the League. It must assume

(2) that all disputes are within its competence and that any decision reached by even a bare majority must be accepted by the parties to the dispute because such a decision, even when regarded as unfair by either or both, is, in the light of historic experience, preferable to decision by war. The latter type of decision is either no decision at all, or at best,  merely involves the welfare of  small group in the victorious nation State to the detriment, of the vast majority of its citizens. The universal jurisdiction of the League is therefore elementary. The problem then becomes one of organizing the administration of its powers rather than of inquiring into those powers themselves.

 One point ,of importance may here be noted. If, it is argued, compulsory settlement is to be the rule, two vast areas of dispute immediately come into view.

(I) There are problems connected with the Treaty of Versailles the present settlement of which is bound to be a temporary one. The present constitution of the League, especially by canonizing, in Article more, the present frontiers of nation States stereotypes obvious injustice and many nation-States, rather than submit to justice, will defy the League and risk war.

(2) There are also problems, like the admission of Japanese to Australia, or of Indians to Kenya, which may be settled on paper by arbitration but the white races in either case, will fight, whatever the risk, against a settlement imposed from without that is contrary to their own view. Neither of these views is, I think, a tenable One. No one who reads the Treaty of Versailles can doubt that if it instinct, at many points, With grave injustice. But no one also, as I think, can deny that those injustices are susceptible of remedy in such a system as is here outlined, and that, alternatively, the making of war is not in the least likely to remedy them. There are injustices in relation to the boundaries of States. These can, it may be suggested be met in a variety of ways.

If the difficulties involved are economic in nature, as when a State becomes landlocked by the revision of boundaries, it is possible to arrange for utilization, on agreed terms, of the nearest available seaport. If the difficulties are strategic in character, the way out lies through the building of neutral zones. If they relate to the treatment of a national or  religious minority, the principles already urged above become germane. It will, of course, become essential eventually to amend Article more by permitting of its revision upon agreed principles as it stands, it represents the passion of a war time period. But as those passions die away, there is room for its amendment within the confines of the Covenant of the League and such a method is clearly preferable to the use of a force which cannot in its employment, be possibly confined to any precise or limited objective.

Nor, I believe, do the problems of which the admission of Japanese to Australia is an example offer final difficulties The issue is not, of course, a simple one Ultimately, it is inevitable, I think, that problems of international migration should come within the ambit of the League. But it is obvious that to decide such problems in principle is a very different matter from deciding upon their administrative technique. Australians, clearly, cannot claim to exclude Japanese altogether, without agreeing to their own exclusion from Japan. That is, probably, an impossible position in view of the economic relationships involved. But, in admitting Japanese, Australia might well be regarded as entitled to settle

(I) the annual number of immigrants she is prepared to receive

(2) the conditions they shall observe after entrance into Australian territory

(3) their possible segregation to specific belts of territory. The ideal of a “white Australia”  is a perfectly intelligible one and no League of Nations which strove to be realistic could fail to demand of those who proposed to emigrate the observance of those conditions upon which the standard of a “white Australia” depends. But, the converse is also the case and white people who emigrate, say, to the hinterlands of Africa cannot demand that the mandatory powers use their authority to safeguard the type of civilization to which they are accustomed against conditions to which it is unrelated. If, then, all disputes are to be within the province of the League, how is aggression involving League action to be defined. There are, I think, three categories of acts which make possible the naming of an aggressor.

(I) A power which refuses to accept the jurisdiction of the League is an aggressor.

(2) A power Which, having accepted jurisdiction, refuses to accept a settlement made by the League is an aggressor. (3) A power which, under (I) or (2) uses the intervals before League action to prepare itself for war by increasing its armaments or its effective becomes thereby an aggression In all these cases the League must exercise against States which put themselves in any of these categories all the authority at its command.

A general question here arises with which it is necessary to deal before the methods of enforcing League authority am discussed. The question has two sides. There is the issue, first, oi dealing with nonmembers oi the League. For some period, at any rate, America will not join the League. What will occur if she becomes involved with Japan in a crisis which seems likely to result in war. The answer is, I think, plain. America, like any other power, must be offered arbitration by the League. Her refusal to accept such arbitration must be recognized as not less definitively an act of aggression than if it were made by England or France or Italy. For the consequences of an American-Japanese war cannot be limited to the original combatants and the State which lights must be made relentlessly aware that it fights at its peril.

If it is argued that Canada or Australia would, in such a conflict, refuse to accept the orders of the League, would, indeed, possibly light on the side of America, the only possible answer is that if this should occur, as it might well occur, it would, of course, destroy the League. Upon the consequences of that destruction do not need to dilate. But it is, I think, obvious that with the breakdown of the League there would be an end to international experiment. We should then revert to the pro-1914 situation, which is, as we have learned, the inevitable source of war. The other aspect of the general question is the possibility that member-States may refuse to accept either the jurisdiction or the recommendations of the League, in defiance of their plain obligations. I do not deny such a possibility it, is inherent in all that has here been urged about the general nature of legal obligation.

All that can be said to the contrary is this: The degree of allegiance the League commands will depend (a) upon the confidence it commands by the work it does and (b) by the sanctions at its disposal. The League, clearly, if it can prove its good-will to its members, is, to the degree of its success, unlikely to forfeit its authority and if it can make the position of a recalcitrant member impossible, the motive of fear may prove adequate. But there is, frankly, no guarantee in either position. Anyone, whether in the State or in the League of Nations, who is determined to resist authority whatever the consequences will naturally resist it.

No law is immune from the wilful lawbreaker. All accordingly, we can do is to minimize by organization the chance that such infractions will occur. If, then, such be the jurisdiction of the League, we have to inquire into the powers that it needs to carry out its functions. The existing sanctions are defined in Article more of the covenant of the League These, broadly speaking, are three in number.

(1) Any nation-State which resorts to war under the conditions outlined above is penalized by the severance of all economic relations with members of the League, and all other intercourse of a financial, commercial or personal kin.

(2) The Council is to recommend what effective naval, military or air force the members of the League are severally to contribute for the protection of the Covenant.

(3) Passage through its territory is to be afforded by all members of the League to any State co-operating with the League under

 (2). A subordinate sanction is the power of the League by a unanimous vote of the Council to expel from membership any State which has violated the Covenant In principle, at least, these sanctions are powerful enough to satisfy anyone of their theoretical effectiveness. In part, clearly, the machinery of sanctions must always be left vague it would be ridiculous to call into being the same scale of attack against a recalcitrant Great Britain as against a recalcitrant Albania. But, assuming the nature of such , sanctions, the question of whether they can be called into being is obviously a question of the first importance Obviously, in the first place, the military obligations of each power concerned must be defined. The League must know what forces-naval, military, aerial-it can count upon in applying sanctions. It ,must, obviously also, publish these facts, in order that members of the League may realize the striking force of the League. But would the States so obliged fulfill their obligations? Here, of course, we dwell in the realm of conjecture. If they did not, obviously the League would come to an end amid derision. If it is necessary to apply force and it found that it could not depend upon its members, it would be useless. Yet that failure IS unlikely, for the reason that the League, in deciding upon military sanctions, is, after all, the States which have to supply the means of sanction and they will not cover themselves with ridicule. They may default but if the problem involved is serious enough to necessitate the use of armed force, their default seems unlikely.

The use of economic sanctions is in another, and less difficult, atmosphere. This is probably the most effective weapon at the disposal of the League for in the midst of an economic world order it is improbable that any State can afford to pay the penalty such sanctions would involve. Its credit structure would be ruined. It would be shut out from all sources of export.

It would not be able to import necessary food commodities and raw materials. Italy, for example, Would lack coal, copper, and iron and all else apart without these the conduct of war is impossible. Experience of the blockade in the years from 1914 has taught most European nations that the power to control the flow of goods and services is a fundamental power. It is a weapon which can be brought into play without great effort, and it is rapid in its results. Save in the case of self-sufficient States like Russia and America, it is doubtful whether any member of the League could long withstand its rigorous application.

Its silent character, moreover, the fact that it does not involve the contingent expenditure of life on the part of the States co operating in its use makes it likely that this will be the most general type of sanction applied by the League in cases of importance. Nor do I think it is a sanction in which States will refuse to cooperate.

 

The Functions  of International Organizations in Social issue

Under Articles more of the Covenant of the League of Nations certain matters of general social welfare are placed under its supervision. They possess, I believe, an importance which. far surpasses the attention they have commanded in popular interest. For in part they constitute a body of functions in relation to which the League already encountered either existing international agreements on the one hand, or a body of fairly coherent international opinion on the other and they represent a field of activity success in which is likely to result in the transference of faith in inter national organization to the more striking functions of the League. As at present defined, and omitting matters already discussed above these social functions may be divided into six general, groups.

(I) The League  is to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labor for men, women and children both in the territories of League members and of those with whom these have dealings, and to create appropriate international institutions for the purpose.

(2) It is to supervise and execute agreements relating to the traffic in women and children, and such noxious drugs as opium.

(3) It is to secure and maintain

(a) freedom of communication and transit, and

(b) equitable commercial treatment for the members of the League.

(4) Where disease has an international incidence, the League is to take steps for its control and prevention.

(5) It is by consent to extend its supervision to existing international bureaus such as the Institute of Agriculture at Rome, and where such supervision is not exercised, it is to assist in whatever way is thought desirable by the Council and all future international organizations are to be placed under its direction.

(6) It is to promote and assist Red Cross Organizations Which aim at the improvement of health, the prevention of disease, and the mitigation of suffering throughout the world.

This is clearly an ambitious programme but, with Some hesitation, as in the case of Russia, not unconnected with the partisan atmosphere of war, the League may fairly be said to have genuinely attempted to give it concrete substance. I shall deal below with the economic activities of the League. But it is useful here to note the type of effort which illustrates this branch of international function. Much has been done to repatriate prisoners of war, and, analogously, to relieve, refugees from Russia and the Near East. Something has been achieved in mitigating the horrors of the White Slave Traffic and of the deportation of women and children to Turkey and Asia Minor. Conferences have met in the effort to control the traffic in opium and cocaine and though what has here been revealed is perhaps rather the degree of homage paid by commercial hypocrisy to the international conscience,there are greater signs of good will in the matter than at my previous time.

A real effort further has been made to check the spread of typhus in Eastern Europe, and it is likely that only the League could have been effective in this regard. The financial reconstructions of Austria and Hungary are very definite achievements Less, perhaps has been accomplished for the maintenance of the common intellectual life of European civilization, though instances of assistance in a small way are not lacking. In sum total I think it is fair to say that a real start in beneficent organization has been made. The problem is the intensification of effort rather than the realization of its importance.

What direction should that intensification take  Certain obvious possibilities suggest themselves There are needed, in the first place, under the aegis of the League, permanent Commissions, parallel to the existing Commissions on Mandates and on Intellectual Io operation, of which the importance would, over a period, be very great.

(I) There is needed a Commission on Educational Work in Backward Countries. This applies not merely to mandated territories, where Special technical problems are involved, but also to areas like the Balkans, where education is still at an unreasonably primitive level. We need to develop a common minimum of educational effort among all members of the League if the full impact of its work is to be made plain to the common people. We have to organize interchange of teachers and pupils among different States if our educational systems are to transcend their present provincialism. We have to be able to offer advice to States which realize their lack of adequate stall and methods, and, where possible, to provide access to a ,supply of teachers. There is of course, some cultural interchange now but its organization is directed rather to the enhancement of specific national influence than to building a medium of international advantage.

(2) There is needed, secondly, a Permanent Medical Commission dealing primarily with the organization of medical work in backward areas, with sub-commissions under its control actually doing medical work in those areas. The work now done on a small scale by such bodies as the Yale Medical College in China needs to be coordinated with the deliberate end of relating it in a coherent way to world needs. Such a commission could cultivate relations with foundations like that of Mr. Rocke feller in New York.

It could advise and report upon current medical organization. It could organize expert inquiries into particular medical problems. It could bring to the knowledge of medical men in Jugo-Slavia the importance, for instance, of recent American work on the prevention of rickets among children. A series of carefully prepared bulletins on medical progress in different branches would be of the highest value in regions which, at present, are for practical purposes entirely ignorant of the advances which have been made.

(3) There is needed, thirdly, an International Commission on Official Statistics. I have already urged the great importance of quantitative knowledge upon social questions and such knowledge is the more valuable, the wider the area of comparison upon which it is built. At present that area is narrow because it is practically impossible to compare the statistics of one country with those of another, through differences in form and method. We can compare the infantile death-rate of English and American cities, but we cannot compare, in any realistic way, the wage rates in similar industries. We need, therefore, an international body charged with two functions :

(a) The adoption of increasingly uniform methods in the collection and presentation of statistics, and

(b) the preparation of reports upon the results of comparing State with State upon this basis. This does not require any large organization. It involves a small permanent staff at Geneva, and the association therewith of government officials and other experts in an organized and, continuous way. Such an effort, it may be added, is really urgent if we are to tackle in a hopeful way the problems of economic co-operation by which the world is confronted.

(4) There is needed, fourthly, an International Commission on Law. Such a body would, of course, sit under the ultimate control of the International Court of Justice. It would seek to effect three things.

(a) It would assist in the codification of international law, both public and private.

(b) It would attempt to develop uniformity in branches of the law, as, for example, that of bills and notes, or the incorporation of public companies, where incorporation is obviously desirable.

(c) It would act as an advisory body on questions of law where, though the para mountcy of the individual State must be preserved, it is desirable to have an expression of expert international opinion examples of this type of question are legislation relating to aliens to the legal position of women who marry foreigners to the position of political offenders who have fled from the State, where their offense was committed, and so forth. Such a commission, once more, does not need any formidable panoply of organization. It requires a small permanent staff, together with the power to initiate sub-commissions of special inquiry And, in general, it would be advisable that these sub commissions should be composed not only of government representatives, but also of persons delegated thereto by legal organizations for their special competence in particular problems

The Functions of International Organizations in Economic issue

Obviously, no international organization would be effective which failed to take account of economic questions. I argued in an earlier chapter that the relation  of nationalism to industrialism is now so complex and so interwoven that the problems raised by the one can only be solved by meeting the problems specifically raised by the other that has been, at least in part, recognized by the labor section in the Treaty  of Versailles, and by the creation, under the Covenant of the League of Nations, of the International Labour Office. Indeed, it does not need discussion to demonstrate that a tariff may be not less a cause of economic conflict than a frontier and in modern diplomacy the objects of discussion tend more and more to be concerned with economic questions. Anglo Russian relations, for instance, are poisoned by the problem i of the debts incurred by Russia before the Revolution of 1917. The boundary of Mesopotamia is connected, as is the status of Mexico, with its oil-wells. The relation of the Great Powers to China is set by its immense and unused natural resources. The prospects of Italy in a world-system are built upon her access to a supply of electric power and the absence from her territories of a coal-deposit makes the problem of fuel for industrial purposes one of immense political significance for her So, also, with the large issues of foreign investment and of a mercantile marine.

It is clear that an ability to invest abroad may bring one State under the political dominion of another, as Egypt became a protectorate of Great Britain. It is clear also that if the mercantile marine of one nations State has lower freight-costs than that of another, by reason, for instance, of differential advantages such as America could grant by her control of the Panama Canal, grave international complications might result. It is clear, finally, that only with  reasonably uniform labor conditions can industrial come petition approximate to fairness. The price of English coal is bound, broadly speaking to be higher than that of German coal, if the standard-day of the English miner is seven hours and that of the German miner eight even more, for similar goods, the English cotton-operative cannot maintain his market if his price is to meet that, for instance, paid by the millowners of Bombay and Osaka.

I take, of course, only a few instances amid the great variety that exist. They imply, I think, that the League must undertake far wider economic control than is provided for under its existing organization. I can only attempt here the broadest kind of indication of the economic categories over which, as I believe, the, influence of the League should become paramount. I do not argue that it is likely to become paramount in any short space of time. No nation-State, is likely to part with sovereignty over its economic concerns until, in the area of political affairs, the competence and good-will of the League has been proved beyond a doubt. It is, indeed, possible that in some of these categories the power of the League will develop less into thoroughgoing control than into the authority to make recommendations, or to find conclusions, which the good-will of individual States is left to translate into substance. But a brief discussion of one or two categories of this kind will serve the purpose of at least indicating the region into which the League must make its way.

1. International Investment.

I do not need to dwell in any detail over the power of international investment. English dealings with South Africa and Egypt, American dealings With Haiti, with San Domingo and with Mexico, French dealings with Russia, are merely instances of a tragic of which the consequences have been incalculable. What, I think, emerges from any consideration of their meaning is the need of a twofold system of control.

(I) Where the loan involved is made to a State, its terms should be approved by the League, whether it is made by the investors of a single State or on some apportioned system of contribution, as in the loan made to Germany under the Dawes scheme in the autumn of 1924.

(2) The method of repayment should never include a power which may threaten the political independence of a State, as the independence of Egypt was destroyed under the British occupation.

(3) It should never carry with it, the grant of economic concessions to the citizens of any special State there develops, otherwise, the type of problem which is illustrated by the history of concessions in Morocco and Persia.

(4) Where the money loaned is to be Spent outside the debtor-State, as in the purchase, for instance, of rolling stock for a railway, the purchase should be made by the decision of the debtor-State in concert with an ad hoc advisory committee appointed by the League.

(5) No State should be entitled to act on behalf of any investors who have participated in a loan without the sanction of the League.

(6) No State should permit its citizens to invest in any loan to a State which is not a member of the League fully performing its functions as a member, and, in especial, the obligations involved in the conventions of the International Labour Office.

But loans to a State, even when so safeguarded, do not exhaust the problems of international investment. It is important, also, to organize methods of supervising the operations of business men abroad, especially in backward territories. Anyone who reads the history of the Congo, or of Putumayo, will realize without difficulty why. such supervision is required. But these are only the last terms in a series the consequences of which demand at every point scrutiny. The grounds of this control have been succinctly stated by Mr. Brailsford.  If a man or a company wishes to trade or lend money abroad under cover of our flag. He writes it is obvious that if we intend in any degree to protect or recognize his business, it must be open to investigation and it must conform to such rules as the present standards of international morality may lay down.Mr. Brailsford was writing in 1914, when a League of Nations did not seem practical the requirement in our own day must be conformity, not to a State-made basis of obligation, but to one arrived at under the aegis of the League. It would, I think, involve some such system of conditions as the following:

(I) Each State should keep a register of undertakings engaged in business abroad. The register should be divided into enterprises receiving recognition and those to which, for reasons set out below, recognition was refused the cost of registration being met by an annual fee like that now charged for the registration of companies.

(2) The register should be revised annually, and should be open to inspection by the public. A copy of it, brought up to date, should be kept at the headquarters of the League.

(3) Recognition should be refused to any person or company which

(a) does not observe the labour conditions established by the International Labour Office

(b) the obligations, especially under the Mandates, established by the League of Nations

(c) which attempts to trade with countries in which slavery persists

(d) which attempts either financial or military intervention in a State which is either engaged in civil or foreign war.

(4) Where a company asks for recognition and it is refused, an appeal should be permissible to the courts.

(5) Where appeal against a recognition already made is lodged With the League of Nations, it should be competent for the International Court of Justice to hear the appeal, the costs, on failure, to be borne by the appellant. If the appeal is successful, the State in which the company is registered should pay the costs.

(6) No company to which recognition has been refused should have the right

(a) to have its securities quoted on the stock exchanges of any member of the League

(b) the right to sue in any court of law, except for the purpose of appealing against any refusal of recognition

(c) the right to the services of any embassy or consulate of any member of the League

(d) the right of entry into any mandated territories. An infraction of this latter rule should be punished by the imprisonment or heavy fine of the agent attempting entry.

It is not pretended here that such a system as this is exhaustive, for, clearly, experience will suggest a variety of other expedients. But at least a register of this kind would put grave difficulties in the way of the undesirable trader who, like Don Pacific, or the Mannerism brothers, is really exploiting the national prestige for his own personal benefit. It would not, I think, in any way hinder legitimate trading. Practically every firm which does business with the normal civilized State would be recognized as a matter of course those excluded would be firms dealing, for the most part, with backward areas upon conditions which seemed inequitable.

To deprive the latter of commercial status in international affairs is to recognize the reputability of recognized firms and that is to introduce a much-needed element of ethics into business enterprise. I do not, of course, deny that, upon occasion, the possible gains from unauthorized adventure will be high enough to persuade men to the risk and some of them, at least, will be able to evade the safeguards here suggested. But at least we shall discourage hereby the majority of adventurers of this type and the advantage of so doing will, I think, appear unquestionable to anyone who surveys impartially the history of foreign investment.

2. Tariffs

For reasons into which I cannot here enter, a tariff for revenue only, as opposed to tariffs which attempt to protect the domestic industries of a given State, seem to me a clear path to international peace.I But it is fairly clear that, outside Great Britain and Holland, the majority of the members of the League are likely, over a long period, to remain fully persuaded that what may briefly be described as economic Colbert ism is to their advantage. The business of the League, therefore, reduces itself to the function of preventing a tariff being used as a method of economic discrimination against its members, or of using a tariff as a means of penalizing those of its members who do not observe the economic obligations which arise under the Covenant. The League, therefore, should aim at equality of treatment for all.

its members under any tariff adopted by one of them it should prohibit those  most favored nation  clauses in commercial systems which operate to the disadvantage of other States. Inferential, therefore, it should, I think, prevent the granting of preferences by the Dominion: to Great Britain, and vice versa. For these operate to erect a closed economic system between the States concerned and that has, historically, a pernicious effect on international relations.

3. Other Economic Function

But a temporary inability to deal with tariffs beyond this point does not, I think, debar the League from considering ways and means of dealing with two other matters of grave economic importance. There are countries in which the standard of life, whether measured in wages, hours of labour, or factory conditions, are so low that its commodities can be purchased at a cost far below that of other countries where better standards obtain. Factory labour in India, for example, has still to learn the meaning, in any vigorous way, of trade unions and, while its standard of wages is intolerable, its hours of labour are reminiscent of the conditions in England before the Ten Hours Act of 1844. What is to be done in cases where the products of such labour undersell that produced under equitable conditions? There should, I suggest, be a power inherent in the Council of the League, upon recommendation from the International Labour Office, to demand from such a State the creation, within a specified time, of a system analogous to the Trade-Board system in Great Britain, but with powers extended to cover the whole range of industrial conditions.

These Trade Boards should apply standards, agreed upon as adequate by the International Labour office, and certified to be such by the latter within twelve months of their establishment. It the Council is informed that the required improvement has not been effected, it should be empowered to demand from member States an embargo upon the imports from the recalcitrant power. Such a policy, I believe, follows logically from the pledge in the Covenant to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labour. The second problem is much more tar-reaching in immediate

though not, I believe in ultimate character. It is concerned with the utilization of raw materials in mandated territories or unexploited areas. There is no reason why, unless we regard profit-making as a final reason, we should allow the wastage of natural resources in such areas as has taken place in civilized countries. In all such cases exploitation should take place only upon conditions approved by the League and the working of those conditions should from time to time be inspected by the League in order to make certain that the conditions are observed. It, for example, oil is discovered in large quantities in Mesopotamia the technical circumstances of its production ought not to be determined by the company which secures the concession, but by an ad hoc commission of the League, assisted by independent expert testimony gold is discovered in Tropical Africa, its production ought to be organized in similar fashion. There is every reason why the League should in this sense come to regard itself as a trustee for the future and to the degree that it insists upon such trusteeship it will remove a source of grave friction in international relations

This problem of the control of natural resources in unorganized areas raises of course the much more complicated question of their control in normal States. Here, at the least, we have some small, but important experience, to go upon. We learned in the years of war that it was possible

(a) to organize service in terms of need and

(b) to establish inter national I mechanisms for the determination of that need.

No one can have read Sir Arthur Salter’s history of the control of allied shipping or the record at the British Government in the purchase in bulk of necessary raw materials. without the sense that such methods look towards a system in which there is a permanent replacement of the middleman by a combination of States purchasing, through the League the stock of raw materials over a series of years, at an agreed price and distributing the stock on a principle of prior need. The investigation at least, of such a possibility appears important for two reasons. It makes possible in the first place, the maintenance of a stable world price-level or essential commodities and it brings, secondly, into the field of possibility, the removal of unnecessary and expensive competition in the commodity so controlled.

Before I attempt to explore the implications of this principle, it is worth while to note that certain indirect steps to this end of an interesting kind are already in existence, When in 1904, Mr. Lubin founded the International Institute of Agriculture, one of the purposes he had in mind was the reduction of speculative dealings in the food supplies of the world, and he proposed international organization against rings and monopolies which acted to that end. Here, as elsewhere, international business has been in advance of international government. Bodies like the White Sea and Baltic Conference, like the International Rail Syndicate, like the Continental Commercial Union in the Glass Industry, have for years conducted their operations on the basis of an agreed sales area, an agreed output, and an agreed price Their object, of course, was the maximum of profit with the minimum of risk. There does not seem to be any a prior reason why the governments of States should not utilize the machinery of the League in suitable regions to assist their peoples to a full supply of necessary commodities at a reasonable price.

The method, indeed, by which such operations are effected is not likely to be of any uniform pattern, nor is it likely to be entrusted to an ad hoc body with plenary powers, like the Reparations Commission. It is much more likely to be a series of consultative bodies, appointed through, and reporting to, the League, but working through the executive of each member of the League. The latter will, as Sir Arthur Salter has pointed out  be influenced by and co-ordinates in their Operations by these bodies but they will be jointly moved less by direct control than by reciprocal influence.

It may be, for example, that the English Government will purchase that proportion of the world’s wheat supply needed by its people separately from France  but it will purchase it in the light of a full knowledge of what France is doing and ,a sense of the impact upon France of its separate action. So, also, Italy may contract with Great Britain for the purchase of coal and the settlement of that purchase will be made by a body which realizes its influence upon the policy of the South American Republics. Thereby is established the vital principle of international organisation that governments should deliberately and continuously negotiate upon the joint settlement of large economic issues.

Certain inferential principles which here emerge may be noted in passing, since their results bear upon a later stage of the argument. It is possible, I have urged, for governments to co-operate in settling large economic questions. That settlement will probably be best effected, not by an executive body, but by the co-ordinated consultation of those in the separate States who are responsible for the political action involved. In general, it is best that such consultation should take place, not, as in the older diplomacy, through the medium of Foreign Offices, but through direct connection between the Specialized department.

The British Board of Trade should deal directly with the French Ministry of Commerce the Italian Minister of Agriculture should concert measures with the German Minister of Agriculture. Direct connection entails permanent institutions of contact. It is not enough to have occasional meetings of heads of departments. The responsible permanent personnel must learn to know each other intimately, to feel out each other’s minds, to gather from these continuous relations the ability to apply a sense of international need to the work of their own States. That involves, as Sir Arthur Salter has rightly insisted the growth between officials of a confidence great enough to enable them to discuss policy frankly in its earlier stages, and before it has been formed and formulated in their respective countries. For thereby, we avoid the danger of implicating in discussion the prestige of an administration we prevent it from having to give way in the public view. We get the basis of a common decision reached before governments have committed them selves to one view or another. No official, of course, can, or should, commit their respective countries but when the margins of agreement are known, it becomes a far easier matter to settle the powers to be conferred upon officials who make the solutions in terms of principles of which the limits are fairly well defined. Meetings of governments then become official occasions sanctioning plans of which the outlines are already organised. And the plans so made may become instinct with a spirit of internationalism simply by the way which officials, through their personal contact, have learned to realize and weigh other points of view.

I emphasis the importance of contact outside the Foreign polices of State. I believe it is of real urgency in building up such a method of international administration to multiply the sources of contact between States. The more we can localise action, the more it can be dealt with in terms, not of prestige, but of technique, the greater is the opportunity for the growth of technique. The normal channels of diplomacy centralise issues in a way of which the consequences may come to possess far more significance than is warranted. A problem of oil in Downing Street may easily loom larger than it looms in Whitehall.

Technique keeps the trivial in its right perspective. If a Foreign offices brought in to grapple with a dispute about railways, almost inevitably a hinterland of discussion beyond railways begins to pervade the atmosphere. And to keep discussion technical has the great additional advantage of keeping it undramatic. It cannot easily be made a journalistic sensation. It cannot be surrounded with that miasma of report and scandal which have poisoned so many international conferences in the last few years. It makes the notion of a triumph much less accessible when, a prion the nature of the triumph is not intelligible enough to be news. Anyone who has studied the working of things like the London Conference of 1924 will have realised that their best work was done when two or three men gathered together in a quiet room, not to bargain with each other, but to find solutions satisfactory to them both and it is not difficult to understand why a habit of gathering together over a long period of time should build bridges of mutual confidence over which success may be reached.

4. migration

Certain Special problems occur in relation to the movement of peoples of which the consequences may be momentous. In part, the issue is illustrated by the colour bar upon immigration into certain States of which I have already spoken. But, in part, also it involves discussing what is to be the general protection offered to the emigrant who leaves his native State, the organisation, for his advantage, of the full knowledge of what he will encounter and it involves the prevention of such movement as that of the Chinese immigrants to South Africa except upon terms that are adequate in a general way. The sooner the League turns its attention to these issues, the better it will be for the League. It needs to set up, under the aegis of the Council, a permanent Commission on migration with very definite functions.

(I) It should have the power to prevent emigration from backward or mandated areas unless the wages and conditions of labour offered are the same as those obtaining for similar work in the country to which the emigrants are going.

(2) It should organise the inspection of vessels carrying emigrants and insist upon the maintenance of a minimum standard of accommodation.

(3) It should be given the right to inspect

(a) the work of emigrant bureaus in different countries, and

(b) the power to license them to perform that work the license being withdrawn in the event of abuse.

(4) It should be given the right to inspect the accommodation for emigrants ,at ports of landing, and to make suggestions for their improvement to the proper authority failure to improve being followed by publicity about the facts involved.

(5) it should receive at the beginning of each year a statement of the total number of immigrants each State is prepared to absorb, the occupations in which there is room, the conditions upon which such occupations can be followed and it should, through sub-commissions in each State, publish the information available. Each emigration bureau should be compelled to give this information to each person who proposes to emigrate.

(6) It should, by agreement with members of the League, work in concert with the consular authorities in different States and act as a clearinghouse to check the numbers of emigrants so that no more set out upon their voyage than are likely to be received. It is difficult not to believe that there is here a region of activity in which the League can do incalculable good. The powers I have suggested do not reach a long way but, Wisely used. they may become the nucleus of wider authority from which there may one day emerge that attempt at an organised distribution of population in terms of area upon which ultimately much may come to depend.

5. Labour Conditions.

Under the Treaty of Versailles there has already been set up an International Labour Office, the general purpose of which is to maintain and improve the standard of life of the working classes throughout the world. I shall discuss later in this chapter the methods adopted by that office and the institutions through which it does its work. Here it is sufficient to note why it is necessary or the League to undertake functions of this kind. I have already pointed out that there is a world-market, and that the pressure of competition tends to produce a common level of industrial conditions in that market. But, obviously, it is of the first importance to determine what that level ought to be. In the long run. depressed wages in Germany mean depressed wages in England long hours in Japanese cotton-mills mean long hours in Lancashire cotton-mills. Italy will not supply preper accommodation for its seamen, if French sailors live under bad conditions.

A world-market, in fact, ultimately implies that the conditions of the State where the lowest cost of production prevails will determine the conditions of production in other States. It is, therefore, urgent to obtain a minimum stand throughout the world below which no State may permit its workers to fall. This involves a common minimum of sanitary conditions, of hours of labour, of wage-rates. It means a universal prohibition of child labour, universal enforcement of a weekly rest in industry. It means that when certain materials, like white phosphorus, are discovered to be dangerous, they may not be used anywhere in industrial processes. It means that such safeguards oi the working classes, as the right to associate for the joint sale of their labour and for collective bargaining about the conditions of their labour must be assured to them.

I take only obvious examples in the first three sessions of the Annual Conference of the International Labour Office, seventeen conventions were missed. I It may be said in general that no more valuable Work has been accomplished by the League than that for which the International Labour Office has been responsible. It has quite definitely, in the five difficult years since its origin, marked an epoch in the history of the working-class.

A word must be said about the character of international legislation upon these issues. There are certain areas of activity upon which the International Labour Office is bound to commit its members to a definite policy, and to no other policy than its minimal substance. But that policy will inevitably be minimal in character. It cannot legislate directly in the sense of itself administering its laws. It must seek their enforcement through the legislatures and public services of its member states. It can, indeed, as it does, adopt not only binding conventions, but also recommendations, that particular conditions are desirable, even when the time has not yet arrived for their universal enforcement and such recommendations will be valuable for the stimulus they provide to public opinion in the member States to press for  their realization.

Yet it must be understood that the problem f of international labour legislation raises issues at once delicate and complex. We can impress upon a State a minimum below which its standards must not fall. We have to take care, first, that minimum standards do not become maximum standards, and that, secondly, enough account is taken of the great variety of conditions to make the legislation proposed capable of effective administration.

The latter problem is at least partly met by making the parties to the contract of legislation not merely the representatives of governments, and partly by making it possible, as in the Seamen Conference at Genoa in 1920, to have special expert assemblies to deal with issues of a peculiarly complex kind. The first expedient is an invaluable one. It not only makes possible the expression of industrial opinion from the most divergent angles, and that in an authoritative way but it also, in particular, makes possible the expression of emphatic dissent from the official view of government. It is invaluable, for instance, when the Japanese government delegate paints an idyllic picture of labour conditions Japan. to have his interpretation promptly denied by the representative of the Japanese workers. Much further is gained

by encouraging through international contact the sense that these problems are common world-problems, and that only genuinely corporate action can resolve them. If the Conference were purely governmental in character, it would be much less authoritative. But when an official say a Minister of Labour argues that some given legislation is impossible in his own State, the possibility that his argument will be overthrown by a worker delegate from his own State not merely adds piquancy to the debate, but also genuinely leads to care in the formulation of objections to that legislation, I shall, indeed argue later that this procedure could be very usefully adapted to the Assembly of the League itself.

6. It is finally of urgent importance within the League that every type of economic inquiry be undertaken. Legislative act ion, the world over, is built upon knowledge and it B amazing how little knowledge we have about the issues with which we have to deal. Problems of currency, of investment. of the effect of tariffs, of productivity of labour conditions upon  all of these what little information we possess is surrounded by an ocean of ignorance. The League has already shown in a variety of spheres its capacity for this type of work. Not only can it survey conditions, it can invite the expert to make a special report. it can summon a special commission to discuss the meaning of knowledge in its possession.

The Treaty of Versailles made it one of the two main purposes of the International Labour office collect and distribute information on all subjects relating to international conditions of industrial life and labour. There is no reason why that power should not be extended to every aspect of economic life. Wherever its incidence or substance affects international relationships, there is a fitting Subject for investigation by the League. And such research has the additional value that it is much more likely, from the source of its origin to be exhaustive and impartial than research taken under the auspices of separate States. It facts are from that character more likely to be antiseptic in character. Few people would regard without suspicion an inquiry into the working of the Silesia coal-mines by a Pole or a German but few people would be disinclined to believe a report made thereon by an independent commission of the League upon which neither Pole nor German had served do not argue that the mere handing of facts is itself a guarantee of wisdom. But I do argue that wisdom is impossible without an expert tact-finding agency, and that the League is by its nature the best tact-finding agency at its disposal. The more widely it is used to that end, the wiser will be the foundations of international policy.

The institutions of international organizations

Such an outline of the functions of international organization at least serves to indicate the necessary organs  action. Clearly the League of Nations has need of four definite institutions. It requires a legislature or assembly to formulate the general principles of international policy it needs an executive or council to direct a stream of tendency into the legislature and to act as a maker of solutions in the intervals of legislative action it needs a permanent civil service, or secretariat, charged with the preparation of business and the conduct of necessary inquiries it needs, finally, a judiciary to interpret the legal implications of its activities.

But to use, in this fashion, the terminology of democratic government does not imply that these institutions will be analogous to the internal institutions of the modern State. Two considerations rule out that possibility. The League in the first place, is an association of nation-States which are politically unequal while they are juridically equal their representatives are, therefore, necessarily the representatives of governments. However each State may decide to choose its delegates, they cannot act, like a member of the House of Commons, as their instructed judgment deems best warranted  they must act upon the orders given to them by those from whom their authority is derived. The actions of the League, in the second place, cannot follow from the normal process of majority rule. In most of what it does, its business is to win the consent of each nation-State to policy and the attempt to bind these to acceptance of policy by the mere counting of votes would be fatal to the existence oi the League. It constitutes much more a channel of continuous consultation

than a law-making body enforcing rules upon an opposition. It rather weights Opinions than counts them. It is not i super-State in any administrative sense of the word. MUCH more, it is a permanent congress of ambassadors who seek the means Of equitable compromise where disagreement occurs. It is a recognition that common problems involve organs Of common decision, and that common decision is best reached as statesmen seek to pool their minds in an effort to find solutions. Upon occasion, doubtless, the League will have to insist upon the acceptance of its views by those who dissent from their substance. But, in general, its effort must, from the nature Of the interests it comprises, seek a path alien in nature from the division-lobby of a legislative assembly. Where its problems admit Of a direct “yes” or ” no,” it will, in the main, require at least an approach to unanimous agreement and, in other regions, most Of its issues will involve solutions of a quantitative kind. It may for instance, absolutely prohibit child labour among its member-States but in fixing rules Of wages for international labour it will not attempt, because it cannot attain, legislative simplicity of a qualitative kind.

I may make one other remark before I attempt to deal separately with these institutions. The solutions made by the organs Of the League must be regarded, I think, as law in the full Sense of that ,term. They are, that is to say, decisions which will be binding upon the parties. But, clearly, they are not binding in the sense that, a decision, say, of a Police-magistrate is binding upon a defendant whom he imprisons. There will not be, in general, a court which can move to the execution of decisions. That does not, I believe, deprive its decisions Of legal competence. It means only that their execution is effected through a different process than that which Obtains for the internal life of a State. We may grant that Italy, for instance, may refuse to accept the findings of the Permanent Court of International Justice upon some issue to which she is a party. We may grant, further, that the process of bringing her to acceptance is much more intricate than any we have previously known. It is yet clear that League decisions must, in the last resort, be enforceable, and that there is, of necessity, arrayed behind then the corporate power of its members.

To say that such corporate power cannot be called into action does not mean ultimately more than to say that certain Acts of Parliament cannot be enforced. Law, whether national or international, is built upon the presumption of good-will. It has to assume that what it does will be accepted by those whom it affects. Marginal cases of refusal will, of course, occur and the secret of successful law-making is so to shape its Substance as to reduce those cases to a minimum. That problem, admittedly, is much more intricate in the relations of States than in the relations within some given State the interests touched are wider, the sanctions to which appeal is in the last resort made are more complex and more remote. But the intricacy still involves quantitative and not qualitative difference. The root of what is being done is the same. Wrong is being punished, disputes are being settled, standards are being created. We are finding in the one, as in the other, behavior patterns that make possible the life of civilization. In the one, therefore, as in the other, we give to those behavior patterns the name of law. They are norms of conduct established by the analysis of experience.

1. The Assembly

The League must have an organ in which each member-State is entitled to its say. The Assembly, therefore, consists of delegates from each State who are to be not more than three in number, and to exercise between them a single vote. Upon the floor of the Assembly, as a consequence, all member-States are equal and its competence as a body extends to every subject within the power of the League itself. It is to meet at stated intervals which, in practice, has come to mean an annual session, and at such other times as may be required. All questions before it must be settled unanimously, except those concerned with the admission of new members of the League, which require a two-thirds majority those which concern the election of non-permanent members of the Council, which require also a two-thirds majority and those which concern questions of procedure, which require a simple majority only.

The Assembly, with the Council, elects the judges of the Permanent Council of International Justice it amends the Covenant, where amendment is deemed necessary it considers disputes referred to it by the Council, or by the parties concerned it adopts the annual budget of the League, and apportion! expenses among the member-States and it considers both the annual report of the League’s work and the measure? taken to execute its decisions. Any member-State may with-I draw from the League upon giving two years notice, provided that at the time of withdrawal it has fulfilled all its obligations Mile! the Covenant, and it ceases to be a member either by making its undertaking or by rejecting a duly passed amendment to the Covenant.

Most of these powers and forms are implied in the logic of what the League is by its original nature. But certain grave problems arise, both of form and substance, which must be discussed in some detail. What States, in the first place,ought to be admitted to membership The only conceivable answer, I think, is that every State must be admitted which is willing to accept the obligations thereby incurred and this must apply not less to States like Russia whose philosophy of government differs so widely from that of most members, than to States like Mexico which finds difficulty in achieving a settled government of any kind. For an objection to the first on the ground of its character is, ultimately, an objection also to the membership of States like Spain and Italy, where governments not built upon popular consent also hold power and objections to Mexico would apply also to some of the South American States where stability is often more apparent than real. The admission of Mexico, indeed, possesses a quite special importance, since its entrance into the League is an assurance of protection to it against the danger, possibly remote but still existent, Of American aggression. Nor is the permission of withdrawal a difficulty. The period of notice is, firstly, a period  of warning and a State which seeks to play a lone hand is always hampered by the fact that action against one member of the League is action against all. It Will never, in other words, pay any State to withdraw from the League unless events prove that the League itself cannot be made a reality.

These are, broadly, simple matters. Much more difficult are the rules which demand unanimity on all small number of relatively unimportant questions. It is elementary in the history of States that a demand for unanimous consent is fatal to effective government  the liberum veto in Poland, for example, was not the least cause of its decay. Even a requirement We the two-thirds rule of the American Senate has, on occasion, been fatal to decisive action at points where decisive action was sorely wanted. But there are, it may be suggested, two important considerations which mitigate the force of this apparent weakness.

(1) From the nature of its membership, the Assembly can only be effective on grave questions by convincing its constituent States, and no conviction will be genuine which does not arise from consent freely given. The State must be made to feel that its own will finds place in the decisions made, if it is to accept them as moral obligations.

(2) There is secondly, a way in which action may be taken by the Assembly which binds the members of the League without ultimate unanimity being required. The Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes for instance, had, as a draft before ratification, to be passed unanimously, but, assuming the success of the Disarmament Conference that it calls for, it becomes binding on members of the League when a majority only of the permanent members of the Council and ten other member States have ratified it.Under these circumstances, for instance, Great Britain might dissent from the Protocol and yet be compelled to accept its obligations a Clearly, therefore, the rule of unanimity is less onerous than it appears.

The constitution of the Assembly has been vehemently criticized on the ground that it is undemocratic in character. Only governments, it is said, are there represented  and it is suggested that the personnel of a State-delegation should be elected by the legislative assembly, or some similar body which can protect it from being the creature of a temporary administration. But the answer to such criticism is, I think, a final one. There is nothing to prevent any State from making its own arrangements about the character of its representatives and South Africa has already selected as one of its delegates the citizen of another State. And, in the second place, since the government of the day is responsible for the making of foreign policy in a state that it should decide by whom its commitments made.

It could not continue to act as e governments policy were to be presented to its own legislature and another possibly quite different to the Assembly at Geneva Yet there is i believe, this much of reality in the criticism. One of consequences of the League is to make continuity in foreign policy important and that can only be achieved by met its substance largely an agreed matter between the government of the day and the opposition. That can, it may be suggest be achieved by making one of the members of each Stan delegation a member of the opposition nominated by the latter for that post. The working of the International Labor office has shown the great value of a kindred procedure. It afford a valuable opportunity of ventilating points of difference before the body most likely to be affected by them. It will tend to take foreign affairs out of the field of normal partisanship since any final divergence of view in a national delegation will deprive the State in which it occurs of much of its authority. And where it does exist, it is of high utility that it should be declared before the bar of international opinion, and not screened from view by the facade of governmental sanity. It is, of course, evident that, in all such cases the voting power must be exercised by the government representative.

The members of the Assembly have, almost uniformly, been statesmen, and not official, and it is clear, I think, that this must necessarily be the case. In all matters of high policy the statesman can criticism and argue, where it is,  public, difficult for the official to do more than announce. The statesman. further, has a power to commit which reaches beyond what can be confided to an official  the latter cannot speak beyond his precise terms of reference, and debate would be stifled if a delegate had to wait upon telegram or telephone for additional instructions. But it is a matter of some importance to decide by what political personages a state should be represented.

I think myself that on occasions of really vital importance the Prime Minister himself should be the head of his delegation  and on normal occasions his place Should be taken by the Foreign Secretary. Obviously, where the business of the Assembly is largely routine business, it ought not to occupy the time of the former. But when great matters are on hand, the greater the authority lent to the Assembly by the character of its personnel, the better will be the quality of its work. Alternatively, the Foreign Secretary should be in his place for to attach a separate department in the national governments to the work, of the League is to suggest a difference between that work and normal foreign policy. That is, in fact, not the case.

Normal foreign policy has to become League policy and it will only come to be so if both permanent officials and Foreign Ministers come by experience of the League to permeate their daily work with the spirit of the Assembly. Separation of personnel, is, in this regard, dangerously liable to become separation of function and even in the brief history of the League the absence of the Foreign Minister of a State from Geneva has tended to make his policy different both in texture and approach from that of the member-minister of the Assembly. There is even something to be said for making the permanent head of the Foreign Office the third member of the delegation for this purpose. For, ultimately, his impact upon policy is so much deeper and more continuous than that of his temporary chief, that lack of personal contact with the Assembly may easily, especially in its formative years, mean the development of half-conscious antagonism to it.

Any Assembly, of course, is bound to be different from what its formal constitution makes it it lives, not by its inaugurating clauses, but from the habits engendered by its experience. It is, it may be suggested, already legitimate to hazard certain inferences about the nature of the Assembly of the League. It is able to overcome the barrier made by differences of languages. It can genuinely debate proposals, and genuinely ventilate grievance. It can draw to itself a public Opinion capable of transcending parochial loyalties. It provides an invaluable . sounding-board for the better impulses of mankind. It offers the opportunity  for great personalities whether they come from the large State or from the small State, to win attention for views which would otherwise go unheard amid the pressure of events for it makes those views events by the circumstances of their utterance.

It enables the small State to meet the lat pow upon the footing of equal discussion. It permits the refer  of problems to bodies more likely than any other to be It from immediate interest or inherited prejudice. It adds to the stature of justice by persuading reasonable men that those who evade its authority are afraid of the judgment of reason. An observer who scrutinized the record of the Assembly would doubtless find room serious blame. But he would, I think above all conclude that, if it had no other value. it would be invaluable because it is a brake upon the power of the great State. It forces it into the public view, and compels it to submit to analysis and criticism. These, in the end, are the real remedies against the dangers that confront us. For the States, at long last, ,which fail are those that, defying them have sought to be a law unto themselves.

2. The Council.

To dissect the Council of the League is inevitably a more difficult task than to analyses the Assembly for the structure of the Council is admittedly incomplete and it cannot pretend to finality until Russia Germany and the United States are represented there.

But, if we assume their ultimate representation a simple but essential principle lies at the basis of the Council. It is naturally divisible into a permanent part composed of representatives of the Greater Powers and a temporary part composed of representatives of the Lesser. That is I think an inevitable division. The world must be taken as it is and decisions made, say, for Great Britain by Chile and Belgium would not possess effective validity. The balance of advantage lies in recognizing the significance of the great State, while refusing to it ultimate power upon the Council. This is done by making the number of States permanently represented less by two than the number of temporary members.

The competence of the Council, like that of the Assembly is limited only by the range of the Covenant itself and, as with the Assembly also, its decisions, except upon questions of procedure, and one or two other, but minor, matters must be unanimous.

The rule of unanimity is, on the whole less of a stumbling block than might appear. For, in the first place, it is undoubtedly a safeguard against the very real danger at coalitions within the Council, and, on the assumption proved by the experience of the British Empire, unanimity seems, attainable so long as there exists a will to agree. The Council is bound to meet annually though, in point of fact, it has met at least six times each year since the foundation of the League. Its special authority in disputes is notable.

It contending States do not agree either to arbitration or judicial Settlement, they must submit their dispute to the Council If the latter cannot effect an agreement, it may, either by a unanimous or a majority vote, publish a report of the facts with recommendations if the report is unanimous, apart from the parties concerned, and One of these carries out the recommendations, the other cannot make war upon it. If unanimity is not attained, war may be embarked upon after three month from the publication of the Council’s decision. If one party claims that the dispute is domestic in nature, and the Council agrees, its jurisdiction ceases it cannot, therefore, interfere in the internal affairs of a State.

It may also, either of its own motion or at the request of one of the parties, refer a dispute to the Assembly, in which case, the latter assumes the same powers of settlement as the Council itself. Where such reference is made, the member-States on the Council must be unanimous, and a majority of the delegates of other States must concur in the report and recommendations. New member-States may be invited to temporary membership for the settlement of disputes with a member-State. If the invitation is accepted the normal procedure applies if it is refused, and war breaks out, the whole League becomes involved.

Obviously, the Council is the real pivot of the League. It is the real source of executive decision. It is the primary factor in the settlement of disputes. Upon its activity depends the creativeness of the Assembly as a whole. How far is its structure satisfactory for the purposes it has in View? Let us note, first of all, some deficiencies. The rule of unanimity is, l have urged necessary in the major work of the Council, it is not, it may be suggested, necessary also in its minor work.

Unanimity ought not to be necessary for undertaking those social activities the suppression of the traffic in harmful drugs for example-m which, as l have already argued, there is the opportunity of much fruitful work. In these instances, the obligation to accept a two-thirds majority ought to be regarded as sufficient. Nor, secondly, ought the Council itself to consider whether a dispute is or is not domestic for if England regards, for example, conflict in Egypt as a domestic matter, the view of France is likely to be colored by her own special position in Morocco. It is better, therefore, that such questions should be referred to the Permanent Court, and that the Council should act upon its decision.

Non-members of the League, thirdly, should have the right to appeal to the Councillor arbitration even when their dispute is with a State-which is also not a member for if, to take an obvious example, the United States were to make war upon Mexico, the annexation of the latter would so profoundly alter the position of the South American Republics as to make their interest in the decision one that needs all the emphasis the combined authority of the League can give.

Certain other questions of importance present themselves. By whom shall States be represented at meetings of the Council ? So far as possible, for reasons I have already explained in dealing with the Assembly, it is important that the delegates should be the Foreign Secretary of each State. There are, of course, necessary exceptions to this rule distance, for instance, makes the presence of the Japanese Foreign Minister at present impossible. But representation, either, by ambassadors or subordinate ministers, is not, in general, satisfactory. Their instructions are necessarily less flexible. They do not enable the minister to learn the meaning of international relations by direct contact with their substance.

They tend to become separated from that common mind which grows from continuity of intercourse at meetings of the Council and it is, in general, a bad thing for any government to have its international policy in different bands from those Which conduct its foreign affairs. Certainly it has been possible to recognize in the Foreign Office of Great Britain difference of outlook from that which prevailed in the department presided over by Lord Cecil, a difference not less important in method of approach than in the object desired.

More complex is the question of publicity. Here, it is obvious the considerations which apply to the Assembly are out of place. Publicity is the life of the Assembly , in the Council. publicity before decision may not seldom, especially in the settlement of a dispute do more harm than good. But it is also important that the Council should not degenerate into a body debating behind closed doors, and uttering ex cathedral pronouncements which it does not condescend to explain.

It is, therefore, important that all decisions arrived at should be published with an official explanation of the results achieved for, as M. Branting has said, “reasons are quite the best way by which the decisions of the Council can be defended from criticism.” It is, I think, further clear that the Council could well hear in public

(1) all statements by parties to a dispute

(2) all question’s submitted to it about the conduct of Mandatory Powers

(3) all questions which relate to the activities of the League under Article next.

No one who heard Lord Balfour’s denunciation of General  Zeligowski at the Fourteenth Meeting of the Council an doubt the salutary effect of publicity and it is a general rule that secrecy should be resorted to only when negotiations of a delicate nature as the financial reconstruction of Austria, are under discussion.

A matter of great importance is the relation of the Council to the Assembly. Here it is necessary at the outset to put on one side the tempting analogies of parliamentary government. The Council is a cabinet, but it is also a legislature and in its combined nature it corresponds to no previously existing institution. It dominates the Assembly, since the latter cannot act without it yet in certain held, it is amenable to the control of the Assembly. A report upon its work is annually submitted by the Secretary-General of the League and its discussion by the Assembly corresponds to the discussion of the Annual Estimates by the House of Commons. But dis mission in the Assembly, while it may influence the Council need not do so the latter may stand by its decisions, and, if it does so, it will not fall upon account of them. It is, therefore, clear that the Assembly is, at every point a body  inferior both in power and authority, to the Council, and, part from its normal meetings, its extraordinary sessions depend for practical purposes, either upon the will of the Council or upon reference to it of a dispute by one of the parties concerned. Generally, therefore, some nine members of the League are settling the essence of world-policy in its name.

Is this an adequate relationship? We have to remember the conditions under which the League must work. A body so diverse as the Assembly, so subject, also, to the difficulties of distance, cannot be summoned often in the nature of things. Its members must, as a rule, be given reasonable notice of matters to be discussed if their judgment is to be arrived at alter mature consideration. Inevitably, therefore, the Council is bound to be the root of decision in interim periods and its power needs to be elastic in character if it is to meet with success the problems that will arise. It must have, in short, what in England is called a prerogative power and the limits of that power can be settled, as occasion serves, by the Assembly. But it would in general be impossible to allow, for instance, disputes once settled to be reopened by the Assembly. If it was known that such revision was possible every party to a dispute which felt itself aggrieved by the decision would appeal to the Assembly for a rehearing. Stare decisive is an inevitable principle of the situation we confront.

The Assembly is bound, therefore, to be a means of criticism rather than a means of control. The differences of jurisdiction inhere in the character of the problem. It is, moreover, to be remembered that the situation will gradually be modified by two factors of experience. The Council will accumulate precedents, and these will gradually, even if half-consciously, limit its power of innovation and, as the work of the Permanent Court proceeds,  a volume of legal decisions will be collected within which the Council will have to act. But it Is important that the Covenant of the League should bind the Council to accept the determination of the Court upon questions of law.

For unless that is done, the decisions of the Court will be no more than expressions of opinion, weighty perhaps, but entitled to be rejected if they are inconvenient. That will deprive the Court of what is essential to its authority, since it will transform it into a body of legal advisers, instead of a body of judges. To make the Council bound by law is, one may urge, the surest way to make its findings instinct with justice.

One other power over the Council, I suggest, the Assembly might reasonably exercise. Even if we grant that in major matters decisions of the Council must be regarded as chases justice, that character need not extend to matters which, though important in themselves, are relatively of minor significance.

The Council, for instance, has dealt with the problems of transit, health, registration of treaties, the liquor traffic in Africa, none of which is likely to lead to serious differences of opinion. Decisions on questions of this character might, it may be suggested, be subject to revision by the Assembly. They will come before it year by year in the annual report of the Secretary-General and it would be a useful addition to the powers of the Assembly if it was given authority, by a two-thirds vote, to revise the decision of the Council. A case in point is the question of famine-relief in Russia which was rejected through the opposition of the Great Powers, despite the eloquent advocacy of the smaller States.

To override the former in such cases will not seldom be to replace the political or economic considerations of a great State by the humanitarian considerations of a smaller. We, cannot expect Great Britain to surrender India at the behest of Holland but it would be good for her soul, or for that of Japan, to surrender, even at grave economic loss, a traffic like that of opium, say, at the demand of Norway or Denmark. Anyone who looks over the range of functions comprised in Article next of the Covenant will not find it difficult to believe that for these, at least, the Assembly might well retain supremacy. How far beyond such matters its competence as a revising body should extend will depend, quite clearly, on the success of the League in building habits of international co-operation. Partially, at least, the problem is one of prestige and it is only as habits of cooperation grow that prestige will give way to justice.

Anyone who examines the record of the Council since its origin will, I think, be driven to two conclusions. It has been, for the first five years of its history, still greatly permeated by the legacy of the war-spirit. In obedience to that spirit, as in problems like the Saar Valley and Silesia, it has been guilty of grave errors in obedience, also, to that spirit, it has failed to take account of questions like the invasion of the Ruhr Valley by France, which cried aloud for its intervention. It has, secondly, shown a serious lack of courage in dealing with the great issues upon which its influence must be built. It was successful in small things, like the settlement of the Aaland Islands difficulty and the frontier of Albania  it was not successful in greater things like the Graeco-Italian dispute of 1923 the Franco-German issue in the Ruhr, the Anglo Egyptian dispute of 1924. This last difficulty, it may be urged, showed all the weaknesses of the Council in their clearest perspective.

For a penumbra of uncertainty uncertainty both the international status of Egypt and her part in the governance of the Sudan both of these were questions which required at once legal and impartial handling, yet both of them were questions England settled by herself, without reference to the League. Egypt moreover, was not a member of the League and her appeal to it, though made with unanimity by the legislative assembly, was not concurred in by an executive which had hardly assumed office at the time whom the appeal was made yet the Secretariat of the League did not accept the appeal as official, on the ground that it did not emanate from a “government ” in the technical and administrative sense of that term. The League, in other words, allowed great issues to be decided without intervention upon the most narrowly legal grounds.

The misfortune of that action lies in the fact that it was submission by the League to the will of a great State, when the party affected was a small State, and at a time when the great State was acting in the name of its prestige. But it is exactly to prevent action in the name of prestige that the Council of the League has been given its authority to intervene. Refusals like that in the Anglo-Egyptian case, silence, as in the case of the Ruhr, weakness as in the case of Greece and Italy, do not encourage a belief in the bona fids of the Council. It is necessary, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald has said, “to empty our minds of those revolutionary, futile ideas that one nation by its strength of will and determination, can simply ride roughshod over the rest of the world.” But our minds will be emptied of such ideas only as the Council firmly decides upon intervention whenever such aggression is attempted. Granted, as we may grant, that such a policy may break the League, it is also not less likely to make it and until the Council attains the authority such intervention implies, the Great Powers will look to it, not as an arbitrator, but as a contingent convenience.

3. The Secretariat

By Article previous of the Covenant the administrative staff of the League comprises a Secretary General and such assistance as he may require. The first Secretary-General was appointed by the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919 his successor will be appointed by the Council with the approval of a majority in the Assembly. His duties, roughly, fall into ten large categories.

(1) He acts as recorder of the decisions of the Council and the Assembly.

(2) He co-ordinates the general work of the League Secretariat.

(3) He prepares an annual report upon the work of the Council for presentation to the Assembly.

(4) On the request of any member of the League, he summons, under Article of the Covenant, a meeting of the Council to deal with any emergency situation which foreshadows conflict.

(5) He receives, under Article , notice of submission by a party to any dispute, and makes the necessary arrangements for its investigation and discussion.

(6) He receives and, on registration, publishes, all treaties made by any member of the League.

(7) He informs members of the League when amendments to the Covenant have taken effects

(8) He arranges for carrying out the decisions of the League through the offices of the permanent Secretariat.

(9) With the approval of the Council, be appoints members of the Secretariat and its staff

(10) He prepares the agenda for all bodies meeting under the auspices of the League.

 

It is obviously difficult to overestimate the significance of the Secretariat. Its functions are both large and complex it oils the wheels of the League machinery and not a little of the adequacy of the League depends upon the competence of its work. But it functions also, within certain well-defined limits. It is an international civil service, and as such, it comprises citizens of every member-State within the League It has not therefore, a single tradition of expertise upon which to build it has to mould its routine out of cosmopolitan habits which are not seldom at variance with one another.

While moreover, it is an administrative body, it does not itself execute it can only organized the process of execution which must be carried out by the members of the League individually. It cannot embark upon such effort as it thinks fit. Its work is limited, firstly, by the budget granted to it by the Assembly, and, secondly, by the degree to which member-States effectively co-operate with it in its work. Yet, even with these limitations, it is bound to play a growing part in the League and much of what it does will involve a skill in negotiation and a delicacy in statement probably greater than the civil service of an individual State has so far known

How is this Secretariat to perform its duties ? I shall not discuss here the purely technical problem of its internal organization rather I shall seek to discover what methods are involved in its work, and the significance of those methods. The outstanding fact in the function is clearly the business of inquiry. In almost every avenue of social and political life, the Secretariat of the League is collecting information upon which the decisions of the League will eventually be based. How is that to be done?

There will be problems firstly, which it must itself directly answer. There will be others where what is required is less direct investigation than the co-ordination of existing knowledge. There will be others again where what is required is investigation by a body of outside experts organized ad has for their analysis. There will be others once more. where what is needed is less any of these than the presentation of recommendations by a body of experts to be acted upon or not as the League thinks fit.

It is only necessary to outline the implications of such a function to realize that it needs to be organized by men of the highest ability. The Secretariat of the League, clearly, cannot be composed of men who were just not quite good enough to reach the highest posts in the civil service of their respective States. It follows that the League must build its Secretariat upon foundations which attract the ablest men of each member-State into its ranks. Its pay, its security of tenure, its condition of work, must be not less adequate than those of the best national civil service in the League. It must, of course, find room for every member State citizens in its ranks but, at the top, it must regard competence as more important than nationality.

It is clear, further, that much of the success of the Secretariat in this regard will depend upon its connections with research bodies, the world over, and with individual experts in the fields with which it is concerned. Partly of course, it can obtain such connection by means of the Permanent Advisory Commissions of which I spoke earlier in this chapter partly, also, it can, as the International Labour Office does, establish correspondents all over the world who keep the Secretariat in touch with developments of importance to it partly, also, by special conferences, like the Brussels Finance Conference it can create an avenue through which expert opinion will be directed towards it.

I do not myself believe that these methods will prove adequate by themselves. If the League is to be effective, it must have an observer in each State with the powers and privileges of an ambassador in that State. He must be a center of knowledge, and a liaison between the national life, on the one hand, and Geneva upon the other. He must be able to organize for the League inquiries on the spot. He must have the authority to insist, for instance, that some convention of the International Labour Office is not being observed. He must serve as the medium of negotiation between the State to which he is accredited and the League itself. He must, so to say, represent the visible existence of the League among its members.

Nor need we belittle the ceremonial importance of such observers. To collect about themselves men and women in each State upon the basis of an interest in internationalism would be a service of high importance. Such observers, of course would never be citizens of the country to which they were sent. They would like the ordinary ambassador, be seconded from Geneva to such work and on their return there they would bring to its activities a knowledge and a freshness of high importance to their quality. They would prevent the League, again and again from acting on biased information or seeking assistance from mistaken sources. Their confidential reports would greatly aid in enabling the Secretariat to make the results of inquiry of maximum advantage to the League.

But the Secretariat has not merely to investigate. It is charged also, as I have noted, with the task of negotiation. Part of this duty is what may be termed statutory in nature, as when the Secretary-General summons a meeting of the Council on the occasion of a dispute part of it is routine work undertaken in the fulfillment of League decisions. In both types, it may be remarked, observers such as I have spoken of could play a part of high value. Certain other considerations, moreover, emerge. It is clear, firstly, that the Covenant of the League cannot cover all the emergencies that Will arise it visualized, for instance appeal to the League by a member against a non-member, but it did not visualize an appeal by a non-member against a member of the League.

Yet no difficulty ought ever to escape the notice of the League merely upon technical grounds. In these cases of emergency, therefore, apart from summons of the Council at the request of a member, it ought to be the duty of the Secretary-General, with the approval of the President of the Council, to summon the latter body when any appeal, though not legally substantial, seems to him from its character one it would be unwise to neglect. There is not, I think, any undue risk in the conference of these powers.

It would still be open to the Council, on its meeting, to decide that no action should be taken and a decision by the Secretary-General not to summon the Council would provide the Assembly with a possible lever for debate in its next meeting. Gradually, in fact, there would accumulate a body of precedents which would guide the Secretary-General in his decision and the existence of such as reserve power, in independent hands, would protect the League from itself. For there is always a danger that the Council will leave a dispute untouched, not because it is outside the scope of its authority, but because each member. State is anxious not to wound the susceptibilities of others. We must guard against any punctilio of that kind.

Another consideration of importance emerges. While the authority of the League will, of course, depend upon the relationship it is able to establish with the Foreign office of member-States, it-will have not only to win what may be called an external confidence from them, it must be able, also, to persuade them to look at their own problems from the angle of their impact on world-relations as a whole. I do not need to emphasis the difficulty of that effort. What, as I think, it clearly involves is developing the Secretariat of the League as a place to which the officials of member-States may be seconded for temporary service as part of their normal duties. If we could be certain, for instance, that no man served as a permanent head of a Foreign office unless he had spent two years in the service of the League, we could also, I suggest, be certain that he would look upon the assumptions of national policy from a larger and more creative point of view.

He would have learned much from the international outlook which continuous residence at Geneva unconsciously enforces. He would learn to trust the League by helping to work it he would cease to regard it as simply one more instrument with which he has to negotiate. He would come to know in the intimacy of continuous colleagueship men who do not accept the assumptions which, in London or Paris or Tokio, go without question. He would learn how national policy appears, not as it affects the interests of his ,own State merely, but as it affects the total interest of the League. Such service, in fact, would be a liberal education in that cosmopolitan outlook which the needs of humanity have made so essential. For until the international mind is rooted in the civil services of member-States not less than in Geneva itself, it will be difficult to make the League grow into the consciousness of diplomacy as a thing inherent in its nature and not alien to it.

Upon one problem it is worth while to say a special word. The Secretariat of the League is drawn from different States, and there are some who deny that an official who is, say, an Englishman or a Frenchman, who comes to Geneva only after he has reached the age of manhood, can divest himself oi national bias. If by this is meant that a League official who is an Englishman will tend to look at League questions through English spectacles, it is. I think, completely untrue. For where an issue is dealt with by the League, especially if it be critical in its nature, there is no simple “English view ” to be a priori laid down. No one can say, for example, that Lord Morley of Blackburn ceased to take an English point of view because he Opposed the Boer War no one, I believe, would now argue that it is un American to favor the entrance of the United States into the League.

It is not a priori more difficult for a League official to be impartial than it is for an English civil servant to be neutral between the contending parties it is his duty to serve. The latter is not a passionless expert who merely does what he is told. He has, often enough, strong political views in a marked degree hostile to those of the minister he is serving. But he is able, by the compelling force of the tradition of which he is a part, to put his own opinions on one side. He is told the goal in view and he seeks, with uncompromising loyalty, the direct highroad to that goal. It is, of course, true that the tradition of such loyalty is not so strong in some countries as it is in Great Britain, and that national prejudice may be a deeper passion than party prejudice. Yet even when all this is remembered, I do not think it militates against the probability that an official of the League can remain a good Frenchman and, at the same time, learn to regard its problems from an angle where French interests are not unduly weighed. And the fact that his views are being subject to the unconscious pressure of opinions formed from other traditions is, on any rational hypothesis, bound to round the edges of bias in a marked degree. The first Secretary-General of the League has been an Englishman but a scrutiny of what he has done, in particular of his annual reports to the Assembly, does not suggest that the record would have been different, above all that the decisions would have been different, had he been a Frenchman or a Swede.

One final remark about the Secretariat may be made. Among its functions, as I have noted, is the preparations of agenda or the meetings of the Assembly. Such agenda contain three groups at items. There are matters decided upon by the Assembly at a previous meeting there are matters introduced by the Council and there are matters introduced on the initiative of a member State. The Secretariat circulates to the delegates all documents relative to the world oi the Assembly. Here, it may be suggested, there is a realm in which the initiative oi the Secretariat may be of quite primary importance. There are two kinds of initiative in relation to the agenda oi the Assembly about which the work of the Secretariat may well be decisive.

(I) It may indicate to delegates subjects that it believes are worthy of consideration by the member-States, together with the grounds upon which their consideration is proposed. By so doing it will secure either actual discussion at the Assembly or an international publicity which will ultimately lead to discussion. Such suggestions will have the further importance that, while they may not be ripe for immediate resolution by the League, their indication as important may prevent them from passing unnoticed in the pressure of affairs.

(2) The Secretariat might also in sending relevant documents to the delegates inquire further it other information is desired upon the subjects to which they refer it ought, in fact to play the part that the legislative Reference Bureau of Wisconsin was able to play at the height of its prestige Few things are more necessary in the working oi the Assembly than the assurance that its delegates have at their command all the information necessary to the making of adequate decisions, and it is, also, of importance that there should be available for the Assembly not merely governmental acts, but the expression of views Opposed to government opinion. This suggests the possibility of organizing within the Assembly a procedure for the reception of petitions akin to that at the Parliament of the modern State. The reception of these could be notified to members when the agenda or an Assembly is sent out and States interested in one or more oi them could then either ask the Secretariat of information upon them or, if they thought raise the questions to which they give rise in the Assembly itself.

That would I believe, supplement in a valuable way a procedure which, otherwise, compels minority movements in a State to be unheard by the body dealing with world-opinion. By such means, minorities could at least make their views accessible to members of the League: and we should have some safeguard against the natural tendency of governments to insist that their view has the overwhelming support of those over whom they rule.

4. The International Court of Justice

No League of Nations could pretend to completeness of structure which lacked a permanent judicial organ. “The League,” writes Sir Frederick Pollock has to rebuild and extend the law of nations, and a rule-making, or even a legislative, authority will not suffice for this. Formal definition and enactment must be kept alive by constructive interpretation to the end of producing a continuous tradition of doctrine, a jurisprudence in the French sense of that word. Isolated decisions of different and independent authorities, however respectable, will never make such a doctrine. But it is not merely for this important reason that a Permanent International Court is essential. Where the problems involved are judicial in nature, it is important that the body giving judgment should be independent of the governments of member-States. Every reason, in fact, which makes for the independence of the judiciary in municipal causes makes, with even added force for its independence in international causes.

Settlement of judicial matters by either a body of statesmen or by judges nominated ad has by governments can never have either the freedom or impartiality of a court independent of transitory situations. What is required is, as Sir Frederick Pollock has aptly pointed out, a body which, like the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the British Empire, exercises its authority by consent, before which member-States oi the empire can be summoned but which is yet independent in constitution of executive purpose or desire.

The Permanent Court of International Justice was created under Article of the Covenant. It is competent to hear and decide any international dispute which the parties therein concerned agree to submit to it and it may give an advisory opinion upon any question referred to it by the Council or the Assembly. The judges of the Court are appointed by a Somewhat complicated process. There is, in the first place, limited nomination by the judicial members of The Hague Tribunal formed into national groups, or by similar groups from States not represented there, certain legal qualifications being required for nomination. From the list so formed fifteen judges, of whom four are deputy-judges, are chosen by the concurrent votes of the Council and the Assembly, an absolute majority in both being required for election. The judges are elected for nine years, and no State may have more than one of its citizens upon the Court though any State which is a litigant is entitled for the purposes of its case to a seat thereon. The Court sits at The Hague and it is required to hold at least one session annually. To secure continuity of jurisdiction, it is also provided that its President and Registrar with their staffs must reside at The Hague, just as the High Court organised the presence of a judge in London during vacations.

The competence of the Court has not been settled in an entirely satisfactory way. Under Article  the Covenant it can only deal with disputes referred to it by both parties, though it is clear

(I) that the Council will refer to it for opinions upon legal questions which arise out of disputes, and

(2) members of the League may at their option, recognize u the jurisdiction of the Court as compulsory by signing a clause to this effect. In general then, the Court seems likely to deal with five types of question: (I) It will interpret treaties (2) it will settle questions of international law.

(3) it will determine subject to the limitations noted above, the reparation to be made where there has been a breach of international obligations.

(4) it will determine the existence of any situation which, if it does exist constitutes a breach of such an obligation

(5) it will advise the League upon any question referred to it by the Council or the Assembly, though its advice is not binding unless it is endorsed by the body concerned. A typical case under

(6) was the question referred to it in 1922 of whether the workers delegate from Holland to the Third Conference of the International Labour office had been appointed in conformity with the provisions laid down in Article of the Labour Covenant of the League, which lays it down that the non-government delegates must be chosen from the most representative industrial organizations. Finally it may be noted that the law to be applied by the Court is built out of four sources. (I) The rules recognized in international conventions made by contesting States (2) international custom so general as to be accepted as law (3) such general principles of law as are recognized by the civilized world, and (4) judicial decisions and the doctrines of recognized publicists as guides to the making of legal rules.

The main comment upon the Court that an observer would be tempted to make is, I think, that it has been unduly restricted in its competence by the powers conferred on the Council and the Assembly. If it is to be genuinely and continually authoritative, it needs to be certain that its advisory opinions will be treated as binding otherwise, inevitably, its members will be tempted to find what is likely to prove acceptable lest it suffer by the rejection. It should, secondly, be given a compulsory right to adjudicate all questions which give rise to a dispute as to whether the matter involved is or is not domestic in nature.

For to leave to the Council matters of this kind is to make the States giving the decision concern themselves less with the facts involved than with the effect of a precedent made upon their own situation. It should, thirdly, be the normal method of settling disputes, and the signing of what is now an optional clause of acceptance should clearly be obligatory on all members of the League otherwise the tendency will unquestionably be to make the

Court the source of judgment for small States, while the Council remains the body to which the larger States refer, That will, it may be suggested, very seriously diminish the prestige of the Court. It is only the knowledge that Great Britain not less than Brazil is answerable to the tribunal that will make its activity a settled part of the habits of mankind.

It should be noted, further, that the jurisdiction of the Court is, apart from the interpretation of the Labour clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, original only and it is obvious that, in general, this must remain the case. But there are, I believe, several directions in which the Court could provide material of great value for municipal jurisdictions. Under Article of the Covenant it would, as Sir F. Pollock has suggested, be empowered by the Council with the task of consolidating international law, and revising its substance from time to time in the light of experience. No one would suggest that this is a simple task, or one to be performed in any brief space of time. But its successful achievement would not only be an immense international service.

but it would confer great credit upon the Court and it would give desirable uniformity to much that at present is divergent in substance and application. There is, moreover, a range of questions where the conference upon it of appellate jurisdiction could hardly fail to do good. It is, for example, the law that if a foreign sovereign claims property as the public property of his State, his declaration cannot be investigated and is exempt from the consequence of jurisdiction.

There seems no good reason why, if such a declaration is challenged. the facts should not be determined in the ordinary way by the Permanent Court, and that the more since the present doctrine is only, as I pointed out earlier, a regrettable result of the classic doctrine of sovereignty. So, also, in cases of the detention of an immigrant alien in alleged violation of a treaty, the national decision might well be appealed from to the Permanent Court.

So, again, if, under municipal law, alien, property is destroyed outside the municipal jurisdiction, an appeal ought to lie even from the highest tribunal of a State on grounds of justice for the property destroyed might have easily been lawfully used under the laws of the plaintiffs State. What generally emerges, I think, from cases of this kind is that where act of State, in one of its various forms, is urged as a bar to jurisdiction, a plaintiff should be able to cite the State concerned from the Municipal Court into the Permanent Court Only in that way can the individual be protected from the irresponsibility of sovereign powers.

What, in fact, I am here pleading for is that the rules of international law should be made universally binding throng: the power to have them definitely interpreted by a recognized tribunal. It is only in that way that we shall escape from the tradition started by Hobbes of regarding the law of nations as merely the law of nature disguised Obviously we should have to limit with some stringency the occasions of appeal obviously, also, we should have to make the decisions of the International Court binding upon all Municipal Courts and enforceable by their authority. There is good reason for this plea. The famous epigram that international law is not law at all has had a serious effect historically, both upon its prestige and its range of influence. Because it has had no domicile of permanent pronouncement, its practical effect has been weakened because it seemed to lack the certainty and the sanctions of municipal law.

It is, I think, possible for the International Court to do for law in general what the Prztor’s Edict did for Roman jurisprudence in its golden age. But, to that end, it will be necessary to admit that the supreme tribunal of a national State cannot have the last word if the decision it makes involves the clash of principles derived from more than a single source of law. There is no reason to suppose that such uniformity as would be involved would destroy the elasticity of the present regime, since most ultimate jurisdictions already depart with difficulty from their own precedents. And there is, it may be urged, great value in making it possible to prevent the denial of justice by allowing the plea of sovereignty to bar process.

If sovereigns, personal or corporate, are different from other beings, personal or corporate, the best way to deal with them is to constitute a special court to deal with them By so doing we can end the notion that conduct by or in the name of government is clothed with a special sanctity. If the International Court did no more than contribute to that end, it would have achieved results of the highest importance.

One further question remains. I have already spoken of the need, under the League, of a Permanent Commission of Law and it is clear that such a body must work in the closest relationship with the International Court. The latter would, clearly, be the best possible body for the appointment of its members. It would be the vehicle for transmitting the finding of the Commission to the League itself. It could use it as its own organ of inquiry into problems where investigation is, in its opinion, desirable. The Court, in fact, may be visualized not merely as a body recording findings as cases come before it for decision, but also, at least equally, as a body concerned to stimulate the general development of the law. In this respect it has a great weapon in its hands.

Legal inquiry, properly undertaken, is one of the great sources of future progress. And it may be suggested that there is a, number of kindred organizations which might well be shepherded under the wing of the international Court. A good example of this is the International Prisons Conference. One of the more regrettable features of criminal administration is the small part played in its improvement by judges. If the International Court would organize such a, conference, and bring its findings, and their bearings, to the attention of national judiciaries, it would possibly do good, and, at least, could do no harm.

It might, further, inaugurate international conferences of judges for the discussion of matters where the interchange of opinion-as, for instance, the protection of judicial independence-has great importance. There is, briefly, a great field for the International Court not merely as a judicial organ, but as an institution concerned to make law the response to need. And the more urgently it works to that end, the more likely it is to assist the League towards the increasing fulfillment of its purpose.

5.The International Labour Office

I have Already suggested that the league, if its to be successful must increasingly undertake economic functions. That aspect of its activity is provided for, in part by the Economic Section of the Secretariat, in part also, and most importantly, by the International Labour office. The latter consists of two parts: it has a General Conference of representatives of its member-States, and a permanent organization at Geneva. Membership of the office is not confined to members of the League, though all members of the latter are also members of the former but under the provisions of the Labour Office, States like Russia and America could accept the obligations of membership without being, at the same time, committed to the larger obligations of the League. Under these terms, Germany was for some years a member of the Labour Office, though not in the League itself.

The International Labour office will, if the Draft Amendment of 922 is, as seems likely, ratified, governed by a body composed of thirty-two persons of these sixteen represent governments eight of them are nominated by States of chief industrial importance and eight by the government delegates, excluding those from States so nominated, oi the remaining members. It is provided, also, that six of these sixteen members shall come from non European States of the remaining sixteen persons, eight, representing the employers, and eight representing the workers, are elected by the delegates of these classes at the Conference, it being, again, provided that two of each come from non-European States. The Governing Body holds office for three years it fixes its own time of meeting and procedure and it may be especially summoned when any twelve or more of its members so desire. Vacancies and substitutes are provided for by its own vote, subject to its methods being accepted by the Conference. It receives annually from each member of the office  report upon what the member has done in the fulfillment of its obligations as a member and it has the right to prescribe the form in which the report shall be made.

It receives complaints from industrial associations about the non fulfillment by members of their obligations, and it communicates such complaints to the State concerned if the answer is deemed unsatisfactory, it has the right to publish complaint and reply. It can also receive a complaint on similar lines from one member about another, and, if it thinks tit, can appoint a commission of inquiry into the complaint, i and each member is pledged to offer all facilities to the Commission. The latter body then reports, and makes recommendations for dealing with the complaint if these are not accepted the case is referred to the Permanent Court which has then the duty of affirming, varying, or reversing the findings  of the Commission and suggesting appropriate economic methods of carrying out its recommendations. Any member may then apply these methods to the defaulting State. The Governing Body directs also the general activities, and controls the finances of the Labour Office, the executive management being confided to a Director.

The Director is responsible for the general management of the Office, and the appointment of its staff, which, by statute, must include women. The functions of the Office fall broadly into three large categories.

(1) It collects and distributes information upon all aspects of international economic life, it examines particularly questions to be brought before the Conference, it conducts inquiries into problems within the range of its interests and publishes the results

(2) it prepares the agenda for meetings of the Conference

(3) it receives complaints upon the non-fulfillment of obligations by members. For the purpose of its work, the Office is divided into three divisions. The Diplomatic Division carries on correspondence with governments, and prepares the groundwork of the Conferences the Intelligence and Liaison Division undertakes the collection and distribution of information the Research Division is in charge of general scientific investigation.

Connected with the last section are the Advisory Commissions of which there are two types:

(I) Consultative Commissions, of which the International Maritime Commission of 1920 is an example.

These are composed of equal representation of the interests concerned, and they make recommendations to the Governing Body within the terms of reference decided upon by the latter

(2) Technical Commissions like that on the problem of care and employment of disabled soldiers and sailors upon which sit only experts chosen by and responsible to the Director of the office.

There are also correspondence offices in various countries and special representatives in others. These serve to keep the office at Geneva in touch with events through knowledge on the spot. Conversely many of the members of the office have appointed attaches to it so that contact is maintained from the center to the circumference also. The staff it should be added consists of the most diverse nationalities. It is recruited where possible by a combination of examination and selection except in the case of the higher posts and it seems to have been extraordinarily successful in overcoming the difficulties of language.

The Conference is of course the apex and crown oi the work at the Office. it meets at least once each year. Each member State sends our delegates who are nominated by its government. two of than representing the government itself, one representing the works and one the employers and it is stipulated oi each oi the two last that they shall be representative of the most important organizations in their respective States. Each delegate is entitled to be accompanied by two advisers for each item on the agenda of the Conference, though advisers may not vote it is thus possible for any particular problem to be treated by an expert from one of the three angles involved. The Conference has a President and three Vice Presidents who must be of different nationalities and belong to the three classes of the Conference. The President who neither debates nor votes organizes the working of the Conference and enforces its standing orders.

Any delegate can move resolutions providing that at least two days notice of his intention is given but proposals relating to expenditure are first referred to the Governing Body which examines and reports upon its financial implications to the Conference. Voting is normally by show of hands, and an Vote is valid unless it totals one-half the delegates present. Methods also exist for the enforcement of the closure, and form the introduction of emergency resolutions. The order of proceedings in the Conference is determined by a Committee of Selection composed of twenty-four members twelve of these represent governments, and six each employers and workers respectively, no State having more than one member.

These are chosen by the groups of delegates in the respective categories. There is a committee on credentials of delegates a committee, which need not consist of delegates, on drafting, to which is entrusted the drawing up of recommendations or conventions out of the decisions of the Conference and the groups into which delegates are classified choose, with the Selection Committee, such other committees as are necessary for the work of the Conference. All the committees have a chairman, and the minority, if there is one, has the right to prevent and explain its dissent in a separate report. All the secretarial work of the Conference is performed by the staff of the Labour Office.

The decisions of the Conference take two forms they may be either draft conventions or recommendations, and either to be accepted, must be adopted by a two-thirds majority of those voting at the Conference. A convention is so drafted that it may practically be written into the legislation of each member-State without important alterations. It has all the details of substance and exception of a normal English statute. Conventions, when ratified must be accepted in their complete form, and remain in force for at least ten years.

But though every State is bound to submit draft conventions to its i appropriate legislative tribunal, it is not bound to ratify them, its sovereign power, thereby, remaining unimpaired. Recommendations differ from conventions in being mainly statements of general principle which States are advised to adopt as best they can but their ratification may be either partial or complete and there is no period within which they cannot be repealed.

They also must be submitted within a year, at most eighteen months, to the appropriate ratifying authority in each State, just as in the case of a draft convention It is, however, notable that no method seems to wild of compelling the submission of Conference decisions to these authorities and it is notable that the Draft Convention for a forty eight hour week, probably the most important single decision of the Conference, has not yet been presented for ratification by any member-States which are permanent members of the Council of the League.

Such a bare outline of anatomy does much less than justice to bat is not merely an important, but, so far, by all odds the most successful part of the machinery of the League of Nations. Any discussion of it involves two related groups of questions. We have to inquire in the first place, into the significance of what the Labour Office has actually done and we have to examine, in the second place, into the value of the powers at its disposal for the end it has in view. Its actual achievement is divisible into two parts. There is, first of all, the legislation, as it may not unfit be termed of its Conferences  and there is, secondly, the vast body of information and research it has, often for the first time, made available.

Its legislation covers a wide field, though one may note that, whereas its first three Conferences were prolific in Draft Conventions, at the fourth and fifth only recommendations were adopted. It has legislated upon such subjects as the hours of labour, the employment of children, the right of association for agricultural workers, the use of white lead, a weekly rest in industry, night work for women, the medical examination of young persons at sea in the first three Conferences, apart from recommendations, seventeen draft conventions were adopted of these, Esthonia, among members, has the place of honor, since its legislature has ratified fifteen of them Great Britain has ratified eleven Japan, seven Italy, five and France, one some of the smaller States, like Finland, Holland and Sweden, have also proportionately good records in ratification.

Certain of the members Chile, for example, and Germany, Italy, and Holland have also introduced various measures involving ratification. What, in hard, material fact, is the value of these draft Conventions  serve, brolly speaking, three lugs general purposes. They are, in the first place, an announce menton the irreducible minimum standard of industrial life, or that standard is acceptable to the common consciousness of modern States. They are, secondly, a very real weapon in the hands of the labour movement in each State concerned tor they constitute an index to policy which has real value for the purpose of securing social advance. They are, thirdly a means of forcing upon backward States standards of legislation which are essential to the welfare of the poorer classes throughout the world.

As at present organized, however, there are obvious lacuna in the mechanism of draft conventions. The duty of sub mission for ratification ought to be peremptory and the government of each State ought, on failure to submit, be called upon to give a satisfactory explanation to the Governing Body of the Labour Office. But, also, when ratification has barn completed, we need a process of inspection far more complete than now exists.

There is, of course, a machinery for the formulation of complaints against States which have failed to carry out covenants they have ratified but that is, clearly, machinery of the last instance, and it omits provision for the more subtle form of evasion. It would be a great advantage if, year by year, both the government, on the one hand, and representative industrial associations, on the other, were asked annually to report to the Labour Office on the operation of such conventions as were supposed to be working and the Labour Office itself should, every three or five years, inspect the, administrative methods used to enforce their operation. It should, further, be realized that many of them, if they are to be satisfactory, depend entirely upon the presence in each State of strong trade unions and in Japan and Hungary, for example, the law itself, or the administration of the, law, practically prohibits the very existence of trade unions.

The sooner, moreover, ratification is made to follow upon the adoption by the Conference of a convention, the more likely are they to be treated seriously by those who support them. The wide divergence between adoption and ratification suggests that, so far, States have not been inclined to view conventions as much more than urgent recommendations And since that purpose is already served by the recommendation itself, the greater obligation of the convention needs to be thrown into more striking relief.

Another point in relation to the Conference is important. At present the Government of each State not only has twice the number of non-official delegates, but it also, though in agreement with representative organizations, nominates the latter as well. That is probably unexceptionable in cases where like England and Germany, the labour organization is powerful enough to secure that its view of who represents it is fairly certain to prevail but that will not always, as the difficulty with Holland has shown, be the case. It is probably, therefore more satisfactory to allow industrial associations, whether of employers or of workers, directly to appoint their own representatives.

Otherwise, there is a real danger, especially in those States where trade unions are weak, that the government will be tempted to choose worker-delegates whose vote it can rely on for its own purposes. The difficulty in relation to employer-representatives is a different one of he need of the Conference is, undoubtedly, for the attendance of men actually engaged in industry rather than the permanent officials of business organizations. The latter says Mr. Behrens, are apt to endeavor to get quick party “scores ” which will gain the recognition of superiors, rather than take the longer and more statesmanlike point of view Of government delegates this, above all, should be said, that, so far as the problem of distance permits, they should always be the Minister of Labour and his chief official adviser.

There is literally no other way of bringing, home the significance of the Conference to the government of the day in each State. By that means, above all, the proper bridges of contact can be built, and an international official responsibility can be created without which draft conventions are not likely to be effective.

Much the most interesting type of work performed by the Labour Office is in the direction of research. Here, certainly, the basis upon which its effort has been built represents a diplomatic departure of the first importance. For its principle is the right to communicate directly with the persons of parties interested in its problems without going through the channels of government of the various States. That represents a recognition that the information upon which its conclusions will be based are not likely to be adequate if they are built solely upon the knowledge that official sources are prepared to supply.

There are, consequently, many problems upon which the information collected by the Labour Office is the only real source of adequate judgment and its headquarters are bound, increasingly, to become the most important center in the world for any industrial research which seeks for broad basis in its inductions. The fact, moreover, that its publications are the product of minds of the most diverse types has the advantage of making them largely free from the danger that any special emphasis is accorded to a particular national view.

The important question here arises of what research the Labour Office is to undertake. “There is always a danger.” says the Director in his Report of the protagonists of certain opinions and certain causes making the International Labor Office an instrument for the collection and compiling of statistics to support their interest and to help them in attaining their particular ends. That is undoubtedly the case and it involves.

I think, organizing with some care the organs entitled to demand that researches should be undertaken, where these are of a special kind. One can easily conceive for instance, that comparative statistics of output in a given trade might be used to promote longer hours or dilution of skilled labor unless there are careful safeguards.

In general, I think, the methods adopted might be upon the following lines:

(I) All investigation must be undertaken that is asked for by the Conference

(2) all investigation must be undertaken that is asked for by the Governing Body.

(3) all investigation must be undertaken that is demanded by a majority of one of the three groups in the Conference, subject to the approval, by a majority, of the Governing Body.

Other investigations, where they are of a minor kind, will clearly depend upon the Director’s views. If they are important, and objection to them is taken the Director should submit them to the Governing Body with his own recommendations as to action.

It is, I suggest clear that the hull: of the normal work of the office must be what may be termed continuous in character, like the Annual Reports, in Great Britain of the Chief Inspector of Factories and that investigations of magnitude should be undertaken in response to specific demand. The more, of course, such large scale in quires permit of transformation in annual reports upon their substance. The better it will be for the work of the office. So far as possible moreover it must be less a conclusion making body than a fact finding body for its influence and reputation will depend almost entirely on the confidence it can inspire. In general it is for the Conference to make conclusions, and for the office to supply the material out of which they can be made or, alternatively, conclusions should be reached by the advisory Commissions of experts of which I have already spoken.

But it is of the first importance that the osice should take no narrow view of the boundaries of its research. Labour is not an abstract entity which can be divorced from the total social environment in which it is placed. The office deals for instance with vocational education but it cannot usefully collect facts upon that subject without also explaining their relevance to education as a whole.

It cannot explain the nature and functions of works councils without, simultaneously, discussing also their impact upon trade-union organization. America for instance is the home of the company , with often enough, institutions for discussion of considerable magnitude but a discussion of their incidence would be worthless which did not also take account of the degree to which they are deliberately intended, as in the ironwork of Colorado, to act as a barrier against the development of industrial unionism of the normal form So also if in a wider sphere, with unemployment.

The office could not, to-day usefully investigate its causes without examining the relationship of currency methods to its incidence. This implies of course, a close co-operation with the Economic Section of the League itself but beyond such cooperation, it implies a duty also on the part of the Labour Dace to follow out the ramifications of its problems into whatever discreet the facts may lead them.

One Final remark my be made. An organization with over fifty members, speaking the most varied and dissimilar tongues, is obviously concerned very greatly with the question of how to make its work known in an effective and enduring way in part, of course, that is accomplished by the translation into the languages of member-States of the more important publications of the Office  in part, also, it is attempted by making the Director and his chief colleagues representatives on mission in an effort, by speech and interview, to explain the functions and achievement of the Office  in part, again, it is effected by the publicity in the press for the work of the League, especially of its conferences.

All this, no doubt, is to the good. But it may be suggested that, even collectively, these methods are not finally adequate. It is above all important that the Conferences of the Office should be held not merely in Geneva, but, occasionally, in every region where it deserves to have influence. In Japan, in South America, in the Balkans, his more likely to make its way by showing itself as a living thing than by all the publications it can ever issue in particular, I believe, it is much more important that it should meet in States where Labour conditions are bad t an, as in Geneva or Washington, where they are in the van of development.

Much, further, could be done, by organization the same basis as the full Conference itself, special regional conferences where local difficulties could be discussed, and resolutions, perhaps, passed in the shape of recommendations to the Conference proper. And it is vital to the Labour Office that its main regular publications should be available in every language in which they are likely to be read.

That may mean, of course, the publication of special journals rather than the translation of existing ones the problem is one of adapting means to ends. Certainly it is urgent that not the Office only, but the League also, should acquire the habit of thinking of language, not as a barrier to impede, but as one to transcend. There is every reason for limiting the languages of official use there is no ground for limiting the languages of possible utility. The Labour Office is not likely to meet, for a long time, with difficulties of a grave kind in the more advanced industrial countries. That is all the more reason for making itself influential in those regions where its influence is more greatly needed.

Conclusion

International government as far reaching as that here outlined is, of course, a new experiment in the history of the world. Men have for centuries sought the means of peace without a desert as the condition of peace those whose names bear an honorable place in that tradition Postal, Penn, the Abbe Saint-Pierre-have seemed even to our own generation to belong to the category of Utopian thinkers. Yet, after all, the Utopia of one century is the reality of its successor and if the hypotheses we have here laid down are dismissed as Utopian, that does not mean that they are unnecessary or impractical. For we are so often the prisoners of our old traditions that we do not recognize our presence in a new world.

Every claim, of a certainty, that has been made against the principles of international government can be shown to be false as it has been applied. The national interest of the States concerned has not suffered diminution their administrative independence has remained secure. The love of men for their kith and kin can be not less real in its atmosphere than it was in the days of Napoleon. The right of a State to retain a monarchy or to become a republic has not altered. The decisions in which it has become involved are made by itself not less than by others, as it is affected by those decisions and those which concern itself alone are, not less than before, matters about which it retains a full autonomy. We have learned, indeed, that through international organization we can transcend the narrow limits of geographical boundaries. We can unify interests which, like those of the wage-earners of the world, were hampered and frustrated by frontiers. We have learned, also, that whenever protests are made against international government in the name of national prestige those who make the protests, as England in the case of Egypt, have always something to conceal. We have realized, in brief, that the territory between States which seemed to the last generation a permanently uncharted hinterland is, in fact, not less susceptible of organized government than that which has already been mapped and surveyed.

But two great problems remain to trouble the lawyer and the septic. The lawyer can understand sovereignty. He can grasp the concept of a State wrapped in the majestic garments of irresponsibility, declaring its own will,and being subject to no other will save its own. This mysterious realm of obligations, half-legal, half-moral, in which the State may obey itself, but is yet constrained to reliance upon others, has nothing of the simplicity in which juristic concepts have moved since the beginning of the seventeenth century. Sovereignty in international law gave him definite sources of reference. He knew by whom the State was bound. What Hegel called the  indwelling unity of things was reduced thereby to measurable proportions. The State which was the guardian of the world, but not itself a factor in an organized moral world, i had behind all the sanction of traditions of which he was the guardian and interpreter. To move from these concrete and hard realities to an international society where the State was but a One in a Many without definition being conferred upon its manyness was to leave the brightness of day for a twilight world where all things were vague and obscure

Yet, after all, it is the facts which compel this movement. The sovereignty of States is seen to be a fiction as soon as they attempt the exertion of their sovereignty. Their wills meet with one another they cannot cut a clear and direct route to their goal. Their wills meet, because their relations grow ever more intimate, and the institutions of the sovereign State fail to express the moral wants of those intimate relations. We have therefore required institutions to embody the sittlichkcit which arises from their interaction. We find them in building a vehicle of spiritual unities and giving to its decisions the power to bind the separate wills related to them. We discover, in short, that the sovereignty of the State is a power only to fulfill certain purposes and obligations and with the emergence of the great society those purposes and obligations are, in their largest outline, capable of definition only by an organ in which the single State has influence but not ultimate power. The lawyer is witnessing, in fact, the transformation of the sovereign State into a unity of local importance in a vaster community of which it is apart.

That vaster community will, as it grows into the common consciousness of men, take to itself the power and authority that it needs to fulfill its end. It will, of course, move slowly and obscurely in its beginnings and the lawyer who is troubled by this transaction will do well to remember that the modern State did not spring full-born from the Reformation. Men did not at once take Bodin for gospel and, when they did, they discovered that his was a gospel which remained true only by not being applied. That has been the history also of States in their international context. But because there is danger that, as with France under Napoleon, or Germany under the Hohenzollern, States may seek to give substance to their sovereignty, What we have done is to arm against them the moral consciousness of an organized world. But the lawyer finds moral consciousness inadequate as a source of legal reference.

For he argues with Hobbes that covenants without the sword are but words, and of no strength to secure a man at all. But the sword is in the Covenant only the method of organizing its use is different from in the past. At this point the septic intervenes. The thing, he argues, cannot be done. Englishmen will not, in the last resort, tight at the bidding of Frenchmen and Germans, of Serbians and Italians. They will be masters in their own house and if their own house is the world, then they will be masters of that world. For to rely upon other States for justice is to rely upon broken reeds. Their interests are not the same as English interests their wants are not English wants. Human nature does not possess the ingredients from which may be hammered out the solutions of right reason. The world is on the side of the big battalions, and to write fine words on paper is not to win victories.

The poison of Machiavelli is in our blood and certainly he who read the record of history would be entitled to his pessimism. Most successful men, wrote Lord Acton deprecate what Sir Henry Taylor calls much weal sensibility of conscience, and he quotes the famous remark of Lord Grey that the intercourse of nations cannot be strictly regulated by the rules of morality.

If by this is meant that men will often enough care so passionately for the end they seek as to be negligent about the means by which they attain it, no one, I suppose, will deny its truth. But for all men, there exists what Tocqueville called a patrie intellectuals, and the history of mankind is the history of their allegiance to it.

The purpose served by States is the purpose served by the fragmentary communities of the Middle Ages they serve, by the barriers they create, to secure self-government against the absorptiveness of power. But exactly as those communities could be embraced, without moral loss, in a larger system, so, it may be urged, can the States of our own time yield to the pressure of needs greater than, and beyond, themselves. Either they must abandon their right, or we must surrender the scale on which we seek to live. For that scale involves, by the inherent logic of its nature, the pursuit of purposes to which private interests must be sacrificed or, rather, its purpose is such that only by its realization can private interests themselves be realized.

If there is any lesson in the results of history, it is above all the lesson that we cannot attain ends in carelessness of means for the means enter into the end and transform it. To make private success the goal is impossible to any State which seeks survival, in a world of States. For reckless pursuit of that undefined chimera is, in the end, fatal to existence. It destroyed Louis XIV it destroyed Napoleon it destroyed Germany. It destroyed them because they exalted private interest over public well-being. They saw good only in terms of their own desires and that blindness has, in the end, brought with it its own penalty.

We, need not deny that evil is real, and that the pain men have suffered is something for which there can be no compensation. We need not, either, insist that there is an unfolding purpose in the world which, whatever we do, will realize itself.  What there is of purpose in the World, what soul of goodness also, is there by the deliberate effort of men. That, after all, is the groundwork of hope. Amid passion and differences, amid, also, the passion of differences, we are able dimly and yet securely to discern interests of mankind that make them one and indivisible. For the interests of men are less and less set by the geographical frontiers of the nation State. Social organization has transcended those limited boundaries.

The working classes of the world are beginning to see that a quarrel between the rulers of Serbia and Austria is not their quarrel the scientists of the world know that the increase of their wisdom is a matter of international cooperation: the consumer realizes that he is a world-citizen whether he likes it or not. States as the ultimate units of mankind cannot express those group-consciousnesses in any real or enduring way. They can, doubtless, exploit the instinct of man to love his own herd and delude him into a belief that obedience to their orders is identical with right conduct. But a term is being set to that power of exploitation by experience.

We are being driven, in fact, to see the position of the nation-State in new proportions, as one only in the varied groupings of mankind. We can see developing beneath the older structure new organs expressive of needs thus far only hall conscious of themselves, but increasingly anxious for a larger development. They can attain their maturity only as the nation State combines with others in an order at once more integrated and more various than we have thus far known. But combination means the sacrifice of primacy and its replacement by co-operation. Co-operation means principle, and principle in its turn means standards. We are evolving instruments which greatly add to our power of avoiding the delusions through which, in the past, we marched to war. Humble men are being led by education to dream of a life in which they realize beauty and the joy of living. An East that was once unchanging has become conscious of newer and larger destinies.

In Africa we ourselves are seeking to avoid the bitter wrongs of earlier experiments with the simpler peoples. It is too early to say that we shall succeed it is even too early to claim that we ought to succeed. But, at the least, there is in the world a growing impatience at the exploitation of man by man. There is a fuller sense, more widespread and more deeply felt, that the inheritance of the World is not the possession of a few, and that for the others life is merely an endless toil. We have discovered the significance of equality and its demands upon us are not likely to be less than the demands we have known in the name of freedom.

The sovereignty of the State, then is in process of disappearance in international affairs because it has served its purpose there. it no longer enfolds and absorbs the allegiance of the individual his loyalties are as diverse as his experience of life. As he grows into the consciousness of the world so does he reduce that world to the service of his personality. He is coming to see that the categories utilized by the State when it sought freedom from religious bondage are no longer valid. What he requires is not the concepts of imperialism, but the concepts of federalism. What he has come to see is the futility of independence in a world which is interdependent. There are concerns where he will allow intervention from none. There are matters where with those about him of his own kindred he claims the right to self-determination. Beyond there are the greater issues which he sees are the common concern of mankind.

It is the paradox of self government that to be free he must share with others in making the rules of fellowship among men. But life has taught us in the stemest fashion that ,without those rules there will be no fellowship, and without fellowship there will be no freedom. Either we have to make a world by deliberate plan or we court disaster It is a grim alternative. It makes men feel how near their feet lie to the abyss. But it is also an alternative that may prove the pathway to their salvation.