The Geneva discussion on the regional pacts and on the guaranty pact in general has again given a sanction to the whole policy of the Little Entente. At the coming meeting in Bucharest the existing policy of the Little Entente will again be emphasised and confirmed.

CONCLUSION

That is about all on which I wish to report to Parliament and in the main features it characterises the present international situation. During the last few weeks a number of alarmist reports have been spread which have disturbed somewhat the public in our own and other countries. I have said everything which can be said at the present stage of the negotiations. I think that my remarks will give the right perspective for all these reports. Our policy has its own firm and clear tendencies. We have successfully defended the interest of the State in the negotiations hitherto and we shall continue to do so in the future negotiations. In the present negotiations we maintain reserve and remain circumspect and do not wish in advance to draw attention to what may or may not happen if the pact is or is not realised. We are prepared for both eventualities. In two matters, however, we emphasise again our determination and intentions: we shall not surrender any of our rights nor any of the guarantees that we have obtained, and we shall never cease to work, as heretofore, for the consolidation and stabilisation of universal peace.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE AND THE PROTOCOL FOR THE PACIFIC SETTLEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL DISPUTES Address by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, British Foreign Minister, in the League of Nations Council Meeting, at Geneva, March 12, 19251

His Majesty's Government have given the most anxious consideration to the Protocol which was provisionally accepted last October by the Assembly of the League of Nations, and submitted by the Council to the various States Members of the League. It is unnecessary to lay stress upon the sympathy felt throughout the British Empire with any effort to improve the international machinery for maintaining the peace of the world.

Arbitration, disarmament and security are the main themes of the Protocol, and on all these great subjects the British Empire has shown, by deeds as well as words, that it is in the fullest accord with the ideals which have animated the Fifth Assembly of the League. Successive administrations in Great Britain, with the full approval of the self-governing Dominions, have not only favoured arbitration in theory; they have largely availed themselves of it in practice. They have not contented themselves with preaching disarmament; they have disarmed to the limits of national safety. They have taken their full share in creating and supporting the League of Nations and the Court of International Justice; while the immense sacrifices they have been content to make in the cause of general security are matters of recent history.

If, therefore, his Majesty's present advisers, after discussing the subject with the self-governing Dominions and India, see insuperable objections to signing and ratifying the Protocol in its present shape, this is not because they feel themselves out of harmony with the purpose which it was intended to serve, or are opposed in principle to schemes for clarifying the meaning of the Covenant or strengthening its provisions. Amendment and interpretation may in themselves be desirable; but his Majesty's Government cannot believe that the Protocol as it stands provides the most suitable method of attempting that task.

1Reprinted from the London Times of March 13, 1925.

The declared object of the Protocol is to facilitate disarmament, and it proposes to attain this most desirable end (1) by closing certain gaps in the scheme originally laid down in the Covenant for peaceably settling international disputes, and (2) by sharpening the "sanctions," especially the "economic sanctions," by which under the existing system, aggression is to be discouraged and aggressors coerced. These two portions of the scheme are intimately connected, and it may be desirable on the present occasion to consider them together.

It was, of course, well known to the framers of the Covenant that international differences might conceivably take a form for which their peace-preserving machinery provided no specific remedy; nor could they have doubted that this defect, if defect it was, could in theory be cured by insisting that every dispute should, at some stage or other, be submitted to arbitration. If, therefore, they rejected this simple method of obtaining systematic completeness, it was presumably because they felt, as so many States Members of the League have felt since, that the objections to universal and compulsory arbitration might easily outweigh its theoretical advantages. So far as the Court of International Justice is concerned, this view was taken in 1920 by the British Delegation, while the British Delegation of 1924 made a reservation in the same connexion which, so far as Great Britain is concerned, greatly limits the universal application of the compulsory principle.

RESPONSIBILITY OF MEMBERS

Into this branch of the controversy, however, his Majesty's Government do not now propose to enter. It suffices to say that, so far from their objections to compulsory arbitration being diminished by the provisions of the Protocol, they have rather been increased, owing to the weakening of those reservations in Article 15 of the Covenant, which were designed to prevent any interference by the League in matters of domestic jurisdiction.

His Majesty's Government are now more immediately concerned to inquire how far the change in the Covenant effected by the Protocol is likely to increase the responsibilities already undertaken by the States Members of the League. On this there may conceivably be two opinions. Some have held that, although in the language of the First Committee "there are numerous fissures in the wall of

protection erected by the Covenant round the peace of the world," there is in fact but little danger that through these "fissures" any serious assaults will be attempted. The changes made by the Protocol are, in their judgment, formal rather than substantial; they aim at theoretical completeness rather than practical effect. On this view no material addition is made to responsibilities already incurred under the Covenant, nor, it must be added, is anything of importance accomplished in the cause of peace and disarmament.

But this, it need hardly be said, is not the view of the framers of the Protocol. They regard themselves as the authors of a "new system" through which alone can be realised "the great ideal to which humanity aspires." The last thing they contemplate is the possibility that their proposals will leave things very much as they stand under the Covenant. And in this his Majesty's Government are entirely of their opinion. How, indeed, can it be otherwise? Fresh classes of disputes are to be decided by the League; fresh possibilities of defying its decisions are thereby created; fresh occasions for the application of coercive measures follow as a matter of course; and it is therefore not surprising that, quite apart from the problem of disarmament, the question of "sanctions" should be treated at length in the clauses of the Protocol.

It seems necessary to preface the comments called for by this part of the new scheme by recalling certain historic facts which, though very relevant to the subject, are never referred to in the documents by which the Protocol is justified and explained.

As all the world is aware, the League of Nations, in its present shape, is not the League designed by the framers of the Covenant. They no doubt contemplated, and, as far as they could, provided against, the difficulties that might arise from the non-inclusion of a certain number of States within the circle of League membership. But they never supposed that among these States would be found so many of the most powerful nations in the world, least of all did they foresee that one of them would be the United States of America.

LEAGUE WORK GOES ON

It is no doubt true that there are many points of view from which these unfortunate facts have not proved to be of vital importance. The work of the League goes on, beneficent and full of promise. Though the United States remains in friendly aloofness, individual

Americans have freely helped both by sympathy and service, while the generosity of the American public has greatly aided some causes in which the League is deeply interested. Could, therefore, attention be confined to the present and the past, it might be said with truth that the problems which even a weakened League has had to face have never overstrained its machinery.

The hope may be justified that this good fortune will continue. But surely it is most unwise to add to the liabilities already incurred without taking stock of the degree to which the machinery of the Covenant has been already weakened by the non-membership of certain great States. For in truth the change, especially as regards the "economic sanctions," amounts to a transformation. The "economic sanction," if simultaneously directed by all the world against a State which is not itself economically self-sufficing, would be a weapon of incalculable power. This, or something not very different from this, was the weapon originally devised by the authors of the Covenant. To them it appeared to be not only bloodless, but cheap, effective and easy to use, in the most improbable event of its use being necessary. But all this is changed by the mere existence of powerful economic communities outside the limits of the League. It might force trade into unaccustomed channels, but it could hardly stop it; and, though the offending State would no doubt suffer, there is no presumption that it would be crushed, or even that it would suffer most.

Were this the occasion for entering into a detailed discussion of the subsidiary provisions of the Protocol, it would be necessary to dwell at length on all those which, in the opinion of his Majesty's Government, are open to serious objection. But for the purposes of the present communication the following observations may suffice.

Articles 7 and 8 of the Protocol are designed for the purpose of preventing a State which has a difference with a neighbour from making any preparations for war between the moment when a dispute arises and the moment when proceedings for a pacific settlement have been concluded. The intentions of these provisions are most laudable. But the framers of these articles should have considered that it may embarrass the victim of aggression even more than the aggressor. The aggressor is at liberty to select his own date for picking a quarrel. Until that date arrives he may distribute his army as he pleases-provided only that he neither mobilises them nor adds to