Now I say that under the Protocol any significance of Article 10, as among the parties to the Protocol, has disappeared; clearly this is so. Article 10, so to speak, waited, or at least might wait till the end of the war.[2] If the aggressor State did not in the Treaty of Peace or otherwise annex any territory and left the attacked State independent, Article 10 did nothing at all.[3] But the Protocol commences to work even before any war commences and certainly at its commencement; there must be no attack.[4] It is not a question of the final result of the attack; it is merely a question of the existence of the aggression; and it is _then_ that all the other parties to the Protocol come to the defence of the attacked State. The lesser Article 10 of the Covenant is swallowed up in the greater Protocol. The other aspect of Article 10 of the Covenant was the undertaking by each Member of the League to _respect_ the territorial integrity and political independence of the other Members. This, of course, is an undertaking in regard only to the acts of the State giving it. Such a self-denying clause would be implied in the Covenant if it were not expressed and equally, of course, it is inherent in the Protocol. Indeed, in the Protocol it was thought necessary to insert a provision regarding the political independence and territorial integrity, not of the attacked State but of the aggressor. All that is left now of Article 10, so far as the signatories to the Protocol _inter se_ are concerned, is to be found in the second paragraph of Article 15 of the Protocol, which says that the territorial integrity and the political independence of the aggressor State shall not be affected by the application of the sanctions of the Protocol. A development of the Covenant by which Article 10 becomes unimportant, except as a measure of protection _for_ an aggressor, is perhaps the most remarkable and unforeseen of all possible developments. [1] September 25, 1923. Technically, the resolution was not adopted, the vote not being unanimous, 29 in favor, one, Persia, opposed, and 22 absent or abstaining. League of Nations Official Journal, October, 1923, Special Supplement No. 11, p. 34. [2] _i. e._, so far as the Guarantor States are concerned. [3] In the debates of the First Committee of the Fourth Assembly it was asserted that "no forcible invasion" is possible without a violation of Article 10 of the Covenant; but in certain circumstances war is permissible under the Covenant (Article 15, Paragraph 7); and with a permissible war, there could be a permissible invasion. See Oppenheim, 3rd edition, Vol. 1, page 739. [4] _i. e._, no aggression, in the sense intended by the Protocol. {86} CHAPTER XV. THE PROTOCOL AS TO NON-SIGNATORIES.