safety and directs the Council to formulate plans for such reduc- tion for the consideration of the several members of the League. In other words, the members agree to cooperate in working out a general international plan embodying scales in accordance which with their armaments shall be limited or reduced. Further, the members agree that they will, through the League, endeavour to take measures for abolishing the evil effects of the private manufacture of armaments and material of war, and they agree to exchange full information as to their armaments, their prepa- rations for war, and the condition of their industries which may be adapted to warlike purposes. Lastly, by Article 23 they agree that, subject to conventions to be arranged, the interna- tional traffic in arms, admittedly one of the minor contributing causes of war, shall be placed under the League's supervision.
These are only general principles. In themselves they would be of small value. But the Covenant, by Article g, establishes a Permanent Commission to advise the Council in working them out in detail and securing their effective application. It may fairly be hoped that this machinery will in time enable the mem- bers of the League to give effect to the purpose of Article 8; and if so, great strides will undoubtedly be made towards the disarmament which everyone desires. In this respect, as in others, the authors of the Covenant were careful not to travel too fast; they laid foundations on which those who were to wield authority in the League could later build.
By providing in Article 18 for the publication of all treaties, the Covenant again goes beyond essentials. Yet no reasonable man can doubt that, under the diplomatic system which pre- vailed before 1914, secret treaties of alliance, directly by mere existence and indirectly through mistrust which they created, were one of the serious causes of international conflict.
Article 22 of the Covenant introduces a new principle into international affairs which is certainly extraneous to the central purpose of a league. The mandates system which it creates is a great experiment in the government by advanced peoples of backward territories and races. The main principles are simple. The Article is based on the proposition that backward peoples and territories are not for the future to be exploited tor the exclusive benefit of those who govern them ; that, on the contrary, their interests and well-being constitute a sacred trust of civiliza- tion, and that the way in which they are ruled is a matter of inter- est to the world at large. The Article therefore lays down that in the government of such territories the interests and progress of the inhabitants must be the guiding purpose of the adminis- tration. The methods by which their interests are to be pro- tected and their development secured vary, of course, in every case with the nature of the territory and the character of the people concerned. But in every case the fundamental principles are the same; and to secure the observance of them the Cove- nant imposes on the mandatories a duty to make annual reports for submission to a permanent mandates commission; which is, in turn, to report to the Council. Here, again, the Covenant relies on publicity and public opinion as a guarantee that Article 22 will be faithfully carried into effect.
With regard to international cooperation, the Covenant in Articles 23 and 24 goes a great deal further than might be con- sidered essential. It provides in general terms for the establish- ment of a labour organization (which in fact has been elaborated separately by another agreement) ; for the equitable treatment of commerce; for the development of freedom of transit; for League supervision of the traffic in arms; for League action in matters of public health; and for the general supervision by the League of all official, and also, if necessary or useful, of unofficial, interna- tional offices established for international purposes of general interest. There is no need to deal in detail with the provisions of these Articles. Their general effect is to make the League what it is clearly desirable that it should be a central organism through which international activities of every sort can be coordinated and when useful assisted by the Council and the Secretariat. There can be no doubt that the result of this must be to prevent waste of effort and promote efficiency in the con- duct of international business of every kind.
In the last place the Covenant, by Article 26, provides a method by which it can itself be amended; and this, it may be held, is not an essential of a league. It is true that the Covenant might have been regarded as an ordinary international treaty, valid, as most treaties are now made, for a certain fixed period, at the end of which it might have been renewed or changed by the ordinary methods. But it was precisely because the authors of the Covenant did not regard it as an ordinary international treaty that they provided a special means for amendment; and there can be no doubt-that morally Article 26 is of great significance, and that practically it may prove to be of great constitutional value. It still leaves it difficult to secure amend- ment of the terms of the Covenant. It can only be done if all the members of the Council and the majority of the members of the Assembly are agreed. But the fact that amendment is definitely envisaged is in itself important, and the proceedings of the Amendments Commission established last year by the first Assembly, which will report for the acceptance of the next Assembly certain amendments of importance, have demonstrated the essential soundness of the conception of Article 26.
Generally, it may be said that when the Covenant goes oeyond the essential features which are necessary to any effective league to preserve peace, it does so with one of two objects in view. Either it is with the purpose of giving real life to the machinery which it establishes: of bringing the international forces actually at work into effective cooperation, in order that members of the League may be brought closer together, and the League it- self be strengthened and have the vitality that comes from con- tinuous and varied work; or else it is with the purpose of remov- ing those deep-seated causes which public opinion has recognized as having led to war. It is not by chance that the Covenant contains more or less elaborate provisions concerning armaments, the traffic in arms, annexation by conquest, the avoidance of unfair economic competition, imperial rivalry in the exploita- tion of backward countries, secret treaties and alliances. It is because these things have led to war in the past that the Cove- nant seeks to deal with them in a practical and effective way, to the end that war may be rendered less probable in the future.
It has already been said that the authors of the Covenant con- fined themselves to laying down the essentials of the organiza- tion which they considered the League required and the general rather than the detailed obligations to which they thought that members of the League must agree. Elasticity is one of the chief " notes " of the whole machinery of the League. The Council and the Assembly have been free to develop their own methods and systems as they chose, to appoint committees and com- missions at their discretion, and to draw up codes of procedure which they could themselves change, and have thus been able to give to the general principles of the Covenant a free develop- ment on sound lines.
It is in pursuit of this same elasticity that in several cases the Council is charged to carry into execution plans which the authors of the Covenant felt to be essential, but which they were not themselves, for lack of time and for lack of expert technical advice, able immediately to develop. Much good has been done under these provisions.
It will perhaps be worth while to examine more in detail the working of the Covenant in action, and to examine it under three separate aspects: the first, the institutions of the League con- sidered as political machinery; the second, the working of the Covenant in connexion with disputes; and the third, the activity of the League in the promotion of international cooperation.
The League in Action. Of the two principal organs of the League, the Council was naturally the one which, up to the summer of 1921, had the best opportunity of proving in practice its working value. Meeting at Geneva, in the first 18 months of its existence, it held 13 sessions, many of which lasted a fort- night. Its members therefore had time to prove by experi- ence whether or not the conception of the Council, as set forth in the Covenant, is right or not. There is probably no states- man who has sat as a member of the Council who would deny that it is an institution which has proved a success.
