So far as this provision goes, I do not think that it adds anything to the effect of Article 11 of the Covenant. The matter would stand precisely where it does now, even if this last paragraph of Article 5 of the Protocol had been omitted. Under Article 11 of the Covenant, both the Council and the Assembly have the right to consider any circumstance which threatens to disturb international peace. This does not mean any right of decision or even recommendation in any binding sense. What it does is to give to the Council or to the Assembly the privilege of attempting, by friendly offices, to avert war. To my mind there is nothing very new in this; indeed, it is rather inherent in the idea of any international association for the prevention of war. After all, there is no doubt that these so-called domestic questions have their international repercussions. The case that was put by way of argument at Geneva was the control of the quinine of the world by the Dutch, which is said to be practically absolute. What would happen if the Dutch put an embargo upon the exportation of this drug? It would be idle to say that such an act, legal as it would be in the strict sense, would not have a profound effect upon civilization generally. Under Article 11,[7] such an act could be discussed before the Council with a representative of the Dutch Government present, in an effort to obtain some adjustment, some change in what had been done; but that would be all. In 1898, the United States went to war with Spain over what {49} was, technically at least, from the point of view of Spain, a domestic question, namely, the internal situation in Cuba. Shortly before hostilities broke out, the six then Great Powers of Europe addressed to the United States a friendly note in the matter, to which this Government replied.[8] In principle, I cannot see any difference between such diplomatic correspondence and the discussion of the matter by the Council of the League, a discussion to which presumably Spain and not the United States would have been the party to object, for the question was a Spanish domestic question of which we were complaining. There are other aspects of the treatment by the Protocol of domestic questions, in connection with the Covenants against War, and with Aggression, under which headings it will be discussed.[9] [1] Article 15, paragraph 8. [2] Missouri _v._ Holland, 252 U. S., 416. [3] See Moore's Digest, Vol. IV, p. 67, _et seq._, also p. 151, _et seq._ [4] Act of May 26, 1924. [5] As in the case of the Tunis and Morocco nationality decrees, Advisory Opinion No. 4, February 7, 1923. [6] This is one part of the so-called Japanese Amendment, as to which see _infra_, p. 64, _et seq._ [7] of the Covenant. [8] Foreign Relations (U. S.), 1898, pp. 740-741. [9] See _infra_, p. 50 and p. 54. Also "The Japanese Amendment," p. 64. {50} CHAPTER IX. COVENANTS AGAINST WAR.