and three workmen's representatives.1 At the same time a Disarmament Section was created within the Secretariat of the League, and the respective Secretariats of the Permanent and the Temporary Commission were amalgamated into one department.

The question of the private manufacture of arms was considered by both commissions. On the 25th February, 1921, the Permanent Commission virtually reported that no action could be taken, while the Temporary Commission, after reaching the same conclusion in regard to absolute prohibition and considering certain measures for the establishment of control, decided that the international traffic in arms rather than the private manufacture of arms was the proper point at which to attack the problem. The efforts to secure the ratification of the St. Germain Convention which were made by the Council and the Assembly in view of this advisory opinion have been described in the preceding volume; 2 but the Assembly returned to the question of private manufacture during its Fourth Session in September 1923, after it had been obstructed in the other line of advance by the attitude of the United States Government. On the recommendation of the Assembly, the Council authorized, on the 10th December, 1923, a joint inquiry by the Temporary Mixed Commission and by the Economic Committee of the League into the question of a draft convention for the control of private manufacture, with a view to summoning an international conference in order to deal with it.

The exchange of information in regard to existing armaments was taken in hand by the Mixed Commission from the outset. On the 17th July, 1921, it appointed a sub-committee to organize an inquiry into the existing facts, not only those of a statistical but also those of a general and political order, and, on the basis of this sub-committee's work, a programme was drawn up and approved in September 1921 by the Second Assembly. The statistical information for 1921-2 was compiled by the League Secretariat, while the general and political part of the inquiry was carried out by means of a special questionnaire sent to all States Members of the League. During its Third Session in September 1922 the Assembly limited the scope of the statistical inquiry for 1922-3 to the two

3

1 As the employers' group in the Governing Body did not desire to choose representatives among its own members, the Council itself appointed the employers' representatives.

3 The replies received were published in the Official Journal of the League.

special points of peace-time armaments and expenditure on armaments; but, in the report which the Temporary Mixed Commission presented to the Assembly during its Fourth Session in September 1923, it proposed the publication of a comprehensive year-book 'based on information drawn from official documents and keeping within the limits of the last paragraph of Article 8 of the Covenant', and this proposal was adopted by the Council on the 7th July, 1923.1

The League simultaneously attacked the problem in other ways. For example, the Assembly, at each of its first four sessions, recommended the Council to invite Members of the League to agree not to exceed, for a specified period, the total expenditure on military, naval, and air forces provided for in their budgets for the current year. Again, the possibilities were explored of limiting the employment of poisonous gases in warfare, or, short of this, of insuring the publication of fresh discoveries in this field in order to diminish their military value. During the period in question, the results of both these endeavours were on the whole disappointing; 3 but the most important work of the League in regard to armaments during these years, and that on which its eventual success or failure would depend, was the preparation of the general plan for reduction which was embodied in the draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance submitted by the Temporary Mixed Commission to the Assembly during its Fourth Session of September 1923.4

The Temporary Mixed Commission first considered a scheme, submitted by Lord Esher, for the limitation of military and air establishments in various European countries in a numerical ratio, but this scheme was rejected by the Permanent Advisory Commission

1 The first Year Book was duly published in 1924 (League of Nations Document A. 37, 1924, ix, pp. 844). It consisted of information supplied by the following states: Albania, Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, British Empire (Great Britain and her Colonies, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Newfoundland, Union of South Africa), Bulgaria, Chile, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Esthonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Jugoslavia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Rumania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, United States of America.

2 A resolution moved by the French delegate recommending an actual reduction, as opposed to a non-increase, of budget expenditure in the case of certain rather narrowly defined categories of states was adopted by the Assembly during its Third Session in September 1922, but no action was taken by the Council in view of objections raised by the Temporary Mixed Commission.

3 For the details see The League of Nations and Reduction of Armaments, Ch. II. A valuable memorandum was produced on the nature of gas warfare. 4 Text of the draft in annex to op. cit.

for technical reasons' and by the Temporary Commission for its omission to take account of the political and psychological factors. On the other hand, a series of four propositions was submitted to the Temporary Commission during its session of the 3rd-7th July, 1922, by Lord Robert Cecil 2 in which the problem was approached from the political side. His points were that no scheme for the reduction of armaments could be successful unless it were general; that, in the present state of the world, the majority of Governments could not carry out a reduction of armaments unless they received satisfactory guarantees for the safety of their respective countries; that such guarantees should also be of a general character; and, finally, that there could be no question of providing such guarantees except in consideration of a definite undertaking to reduce armaments.

These proposals were adopted in their general lines by the Temporary Mixed Commission, but the Permanent Commission insisted that the guarantee to be offered in consideration of an undertaking to reduce armaments would not be effective unless it were given substance in a technical plan for military co-operation pre-arranged between the parties. This criticism inclined some members of the Temporary Commission to abandon the idea of a general Treaty as technically impracticable (since it was evidently impossible to work out general staff plans for the co-operation of every permutation and combination of states in every contingency) and to begin by arranging partial treaties of guarantee, fortified by technical military conventions, between a limited number of states drawn together by some common fear. The latter suggestion, however, was combated by Lord Robert Cecil and his supporters on the political ground that in practice it would not lead to a local and still less to a general reduction of armaments, but would revive— and this under the League's auspices-the system of competitive group alliances which had resulted in the War of 1914. These two theses were debated by the Assembly of the League during its Third Session in September 1922, and a draft suggested by M. de Jouvenel (France), as a compromise between the technical and political considerations which were advanced respectively by the opposing parties, was eventually adopted as Assembly Resolution 14. In the

1 Or perhaps more truly on account of postulates which would have struck at the root of any scheme of disarmament whatsoever.

2 For an exposition of Lord Robert Cecil's views see the record of his address on the draft Treaty of Mutual Assistance, delivered to the British Institute of International Affairs on the 19th February, 1924, and reprinted from the Journal of the Institute (price 18.).

first two clauses of this resolution, Lord Robert's first two propositions, that a reduction of armaments must be general and that it must be compensated by a guarantee, reappeared with little change. His third proposition, however, for a general guarantee was modified by the provisions that parties should be bound to furnish immediate and effective assistance in accordance with a prearranged plan; that the obligation to render assistance to a country attacked should be limited in principle to countries situated in the same part of the globe;1 and that where, for historical, geographical, or other reasons, a country was in special danger of attack, detailed arrangements should be made for its defence in accordance with the abovementioned plan; 2 while his fourth proposition, that previous consent to a reduction of armaments was the first condition for adherence to the Treaty, was amplified by a rider introducing the idea of partial treaties of guarantee as optional and supplementary measures. 'This reduction could be carried out either by means of a general Treaty, which was the most desirable plan, or by means of partial treaties designed to be extended and open to all countries. In the former case the Treaty would carry with it a general reduction of armaments. In the latter case, the reduction should be proportionate to the guarantees afforded by the Treaty.' The Council was requested to examine these proposals with the assistance of the Temporary Commission.

3

On the basis of this resolution, two drafts were submitted to the Temporary Commission by Lord Robert Cecil and Colonel Réquin respectively; and, after long and arduous negotiations, these were successfully co-ordinated in a single text, which was laid by the Temporary Commission before the Assembly during its Fourth Session in September 1923, and transmitted by the Assembly to the Council with certain amendments and with the recommendation that it should be communicated to all Governments with a request for their observations.

In this document,5 after a preamble referring to Articles 8, 10 and 16

1 A limitation of liabilities which was designed to reassure the non-European Members of the League.

2 A special concession to the anxieties of France and Belgium.

Colonel Réquin was the principal critic of the third of Lord Robert's four original propositions.

The Temporary Mixed Commission, and the Special Committee on the subject which it had set up, sat between them for about six weeks (at intervals from January to September 1923 inclusive) and considered four or five separate drafts. Lord Robert Cecil succeeded in securing the embodiment of the greater part of the substance, though not the form, of his original draft in the final co-ordinated text.

Text in annex to The League of Nations and Reduction of Armaments.

of the Covenant, aggressive war' was declared to be an international crime' which the parties pledged themselves not to commit, and the cases in which a war should not be considered a war of aggression were defined (Art. 1); a joint and several undertaking was to be given by all parties to assist any of their number who was the object of a war of aggression (Art. 2); the notification to the League of threats of aggression' and the action to be taken by the Council in this event, were provided for (Art. 3)-great stress being laid on the prevention of war by giving the Council wide powers to take action on any appeal under this article; in case of an outbreak of hostilities the Council was to decide within four days which parties were objects of aggression' and whether they were entitled to claim the assistance provided under the Treaty-the parties to the Treaty undertaking in advance to accept such decision (Art. 4); in pursuance of Article 2, the parties were to furnish assistance in the form determined by the Council as the most effective', and six particular courses of action open to the Council were laid down (Art. 5); the parties might conclude, either as between two of them or as between a larger number, agreements complementary to the present Treaty exclusively for the purpose of their mutual defence and intended solely to facilitate the carrying out of the measures prescribed in this Treaty, determining in advance the assistance which they would give to each other in the event of any act of aggression (Art. 6); the Council was to review such complementary agreements, and they were to be registered (under Art. 18 of the Covenant) if and when recognized (Art. 7); parties to complementary agreements might undertake in any such agreements to put into immediate execution, in the cases of aggression contemplated in them, the plan of assistance agreed upon,2 in which case they should inform the Council of the League of Nations, without delay, concerning the measures which they had taken to insure the execution of such agreements; the Council was then immediately to take the decision required under Article 4, and, if it found that the

1

1 The Council might: (a) immediately apply the economic sanctions of Article 16 of the Covenant; (b) invoke by name the parties whose assistance it required (though no party situated in a continent other than that in which operations would take place should, in principle, be required to co-operate in military or even in naval or air operations); (c) determine the forces which each state should place at its disposal (though each state retained a full right of veto, a reservation which reappeared in the Protocol); and (d, e, f) arrange for communications and transport, financial co-operation, and the appointment of the Higher Command.

2 The French called this arrangement déclanchement automatique' or ' automatisme '—a phrase much used in the debates.