Arbitration (International law); Disarmament; Security, International; War
I have mentioned more than once that the Protocol of Geneva
contemplates that its provisions shall form part of the Covenant; in
other words, that the two documents shall be amalgamated, forming an
amended Covenant. With the hope of facilitating a general view, I have
endeavored to put the two documents together in the form of an
"amended" Covenant, and the result of this effort is set out below.[1]
Looking at the text of this "amended" Covenant, one may observe that
while twenty of the present twenty-six Articles {107} remain unchanged
in form, Articles 12 to 17, inclusive, are expanded and somewhat
rewritten; and eight Articles are added; and I do not think that the
text of the "amended" Covenant could be phrased in much less language
than it appears below.
Of course the length of a document in itself is not of much
consequence; but it is not unimportant to observe that the "amended"
Covenant is very much longer than the Covenant as it now reads. This
fact, I say, is important, because it is the visible evidence of a
reality. The Protocol of Geneva is not a mere completion of the
provisions of the Covenant. Advocates of the Protocol make a very
serious mistake when they erroneously say that the Protocol of Geneva
is merely a rounding out of incomplete and partial agreements of the
Covenant.
And it must be borne in mind that new or varied phrases in one Article
may change the whole; the amended Covenant is altered not only in those
Articles which may be textually amended, but throughout; I attempted to
show this in detail as to Article 10 of the Covenant[2]; like any other
document, the entire new paper must be read together.
What the Protocol of Geneva does is to create a new and a different
League of Nations. It is true that what I may call the procedural and
structural functions of the League are not changed; but the system of
international relations which is now set up under the League is so much
changed that one may properly say that it is an entirely new and
different system.
To my mind, there are three outstanding features of the "amended"
Covenant. It creates a complete system of compulsory arbitration; it
consecrates the legality of the _status quo_; and it is a general
defensive alliance.
Now let us compare these three features of the "amended" Covenant with
the ideas of the existing Covenant.
The first mentioned, the system of compulsory arbitration, is by far
the most important and the one that should be the starting point for
any view of the "amended" Covenant as a whole. In this arbitration
system is contained the idea of outlawry of {108} war which the
document embodies. The arbitration of disputes under the new system is
to take the place of war, which is outlawed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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