18. The above brief summary indicates how in the Protocol the committees of the Assembly have sought to embody, in concrete form, the proposals made to the Assembly itself by the British and French Prime Ministers. The Protocol is an attempt to complete the Covenant, to facilitate and develop the procedure of pacific settlement provided therein, and to define more clearly the obligations imposed by it on States Members of the League. The Protocol is based on the Covenant and keeps within its terms except in so far that it extends the Covenant procedure to give an alternative procedure by peaceful {227} settlement, even in those cases for which the framers of the Covenant in 1919 were unable to find a remedy. So far as it contains anything new, it is to be found in the definition of aggression which follows as a necessary corollary to the limitations inserted in the establishment of a universal system of peaceful settlement. But even here the principle is not new. Article 16 of the Covenant decreed that sanctions should be applied against any Member of the League that might "resort to war in disregard of its Covenants under articles 12, 13 or 15." Article 10 of the Protocol decrees sanctions against any State resorting to war without availing itself or in defiance of, the procedure of pacific settlement provided in the Covenant as amplified by the Protocol itself. The amplification of that procedure to cover all cases, so as to remove all excuse for resort to war, has enabled the framers of the Protocol to give a more exact definition of aggression, and to make that definition more certain and more automatic. The Protocol is thus free from the reproach that had been levelled against the Draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance, which left a wide and dangerous discretion to the Council in determining which party to a dispute was the aggressor. It further discards the system proposed in the draft Treaty, whereby power was given to the Council to decide on and to direct the military sanctions required. The draft Treaty tended towards the realisation of the idea of the League as a "super-State": the Protocol respects the principle of national sovereignty. Every State retains its own liberty of action: it is still free to choose what it will do. The Protocol has stated in clearer terms what is expected of those who signed the Covenant in 1919, and it is to be hoped that this more explicit declaration may serve to deter those who would contemplate a violation of the spirit of the Covenant, whilst reassuring those who have hitherto sought safety in their own armed strength, by giving them confidence in the solidarity of the civilised nations and in their determination to resist all unscrupulous attempts to plunge the world again into the disaster of war. {228}