entail some inconvenient obligation. The smaller and weaker nations will have rights that must be respected and upheld by the League. The stronger nations must forgo the right to make their interests prevail against the weaker by force: and all the States must forgo the right in any dispute to resort to force before other methods of settlement by conference, conciliation, or, if need be, arbitration, have been tried. This is the limitation.
The obligation is that if any nation will not observe this limitation upon its national action; if it breaks the agreement which is the basis of the League, rejects all peaceful methods of settlement and resorts to force, the other nations must one and all use their combined force against it. The economic pressure that such a League could use would in itself be very powerful, and the action of some of the smaller States composing the League could perhaps not go beyond economic pressure, but those States that have power must be ready to use all the force, economic, military, or naval, that they possess. It must be clearly understood and accepted that defection from or violation of the agreement by one or more States does not absolve all or any of the others from the obligation to enforce the agreement.
Anything less than this is of no value. How worthless it may be can be seen by reading the debate in the House of Lords in 1867 upon the Treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Luxemburg. It was
