What the paragraph of Article 5 above quoted says is that although
neither the Council nor a Committee of Arbitrators may consider a
dispute regarding a domestic question if the point is raised, still
none the less the Council or the Assembly, under Article 11 of the
Covenant, may consider the situation in its bearing upon the peace of
the world. Now such consideration under Article 11 of the Covenant
would have been possible without this statement, so that, to my mind,
this portion of the Japanese amendment makes no change in that regard.
The paragraph does not change the legal situation at all, but simply
makes explicit what was otherwise implied.
The other portion of the Japanese Amendment is the clause which is
added to sub-head 1 of the second paragraph of Article 10, beginning
with the word "nevertheless."
In order to see just what this other portion of the Japanese Amendment
is, I cite here the second paragraph of Article 10 (omitting certain
phrases not here material) with the words of the Japanese Amendment
italicised:
"In the event of hostilities having broken out, any State shall
be presumed to be an aggressor, unless a decision of the Council,
which must be taken unanimously, shall otherwise declare:
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1. If it * * * has disregarded a unanimous report of the Council,
a judicial sentence or an arbitral award recognizing that the
dispute between it and the other belligerent State arises out of
a matter which by international law is solely within the domestic
jurisdiction of the latter State; _nevertheless, in the last case
the State shall only be presumed to be an aggressor if it has not
previously submitted the question to the Council or the Assembly,
in accordance with Article 11 of the Covenant_."
The language of Article 10 of the Protocol is quite involved, I have
already discussed it at some length,[5] endeavoring to show that its
real effect differs greatly from the theory of its framers, a theory
borne out, perhaps, by the language of Article 10 considered as
language only. I sum up _that theory_ as follows:
Laying down the general principle that a State which resorts to war
contrary to the Covenant or to the Protocol is an aggressor, and
prescribing a general procedure by which it is for the Council to
decide, unanimously of course, whether such a violation has taken place
(and in the absence of such unanimous decision to declare an armistice)
none the less Article 10 limits or qualifies this general procedure by
enumerating certain classes of cases in which the facts would
_supposedly_ be so open, so notorious, so impossible to question, that
they would create a presumption as to the State which was the
aggressor; and such presumption could be upset only by unanimous vote
of the Council against it.
I repeat that this is the theory of MM. Benes and Politis; it is not
mine.