Frederick Pollock

“ The first business of a League of Nations is to secure its members against military aggression. Every member must pledge itself not to take the law (or what it deems to be the law) into its own hands against any other, and to aid the others, at need, in case of attack from without. The next duty is to provide regular and equitable means of settling disputes. Surrender of the liberty to assert one's claims by force can only be in exchange for reasonable assurance of judgement and justice. ”

“ Eights cannot be made out of nothing any more than mechanical work; as surely as there is no action without reaction in physics, you cannot create rights in politics without imposing duties and limiting freedom of action somewhere. ”

“ How, then, shall the League of Nations be organized? Obviously by solemn express convention, a convention whose binding force must depend on the renouncement by every party to it, in some measure, of independent sovereign power, and in particular of the right to be judge in one's own cause. For the plan of merely persuasive authority, which any party may obey or disregard at his own discretion, has been tried and found wanting. ”

“ Not that their willingness to join a league of nations, unless Germany is to be the head of it (for that is what their official utterances indicate) , is to be counted on. The only kind of partnership we ask for or can accept is one in which no single Power may be dominant. In the least favourable event a reinforced and regularly organized league, based on the present military union of the Western Powers and excluding the Central Powers, would in all ways be a great step in advance, and far more effectual for restraining future aggression than unorganized alliance or understandings. ”

“ Like the reforms of the Liquor Control Board and all other rational reforms, it has enemies or treacherous friends in the camps of opposite extremes. A handful of chauvinists, whose only war aim seems to be to make plunder of the battered and discredited shining armour of Prussianism for their own wear, denounce it with their shrillest screams as a pacifist fad. A handful of pacifists and semi-pacifists offer their insipid lip-service with the purpose of taking out all the backbone and converting a drastic remedy into a futile anodyne. ”

“ Success in accomplishing all or any of the ends for which the League of Peace will be founded assumes initial good faith, continuing good will, and perseverance in carrying the business through. That is no objection at all. For the work will not even be begun unless the delegates of the free nations meet with such high and serious purpose as to make sure that these conditions are satisfied. With faith, courage, and patience it can and will be done. ”

“ Their meeting will be a wholly different affair from the Hague Conference, where the chief aim of one Great Power was to have as little done as was decently possible, and that of some lesser ones to magnify their own importance at all costs. When difficulties are faced by capable men not divided on any fundamental principle, and determined to reach a working agreement, they have already lost half their terrors. ”

“ Lord Parker will have nothing to do with the most unwise proposal of the English League of Nations Society, 'that any civilized State desiring to join the League shall be admitted to membership'. (The objectionable clause is modified in that society's own comment by a half-hearted intimation that the League would have to judge in every case whether the candidate was civilized; but that is not the right word. Modern Germany is civilized and in some respects over-civilized; our case is that the Prussian type of civilization is a thoroughly bad type and not fit for decent company.) ”

“ Indeed there must be some provision, by Lord Parker's method or otherwise, against the Great Powers or a majority of them being bound on paper by a combination of minor Powers to some burdensome course which they disapprove. Certain paper majorities at the Hague Conferences may serve to point the warning. As for the contrary danger of the Greater Powers combining to partition the lesser ones, as it were, into spheres of influence, the answer is that such a plot could be hatched only by secret agreement, and secret agreements would be expressly forbidden by the constitution of the League. ”

“ A nation refusing or neglecting to take steps for peaceable settlement of a dispute would be denounced by special resolution of the Council, and, if a member, would forfeit its membership. On an act of war being notified by the Council, the members of the League would be bound to break off diplomatic relations and commercial intercourse with the offending nation. If this does not suffice, military execution is to be undertaken on the Council's requisition by specified members of the League, consisting of the chief military and naval Powers. ”

“ But the right and liberty of self-defence, it is said, are indefeasible. Quite true in the last resort, and as much so for one man as for a society. Nevertheless all civilized laws keep self-defence within pretty strict bounds, English law rather specially so. ”

“ No member of the Postal Union, which includes almost all civilized governments, is sovereign in the matter of foreign postal rates. The question for every contracting party in all forms of contract is whether the portion of liberty he surrenders is adequately recompensed by the portion of reward or security he acquires. ”

“ The strength of that tyranny must be broken as the first condition of making such a peace as will deserve to be secured by better and more lasting covenants than the usual treaties. There must be no betrayal of oppressed nationalities in the east as the price of restitution in the west ”

“ As to this it is only to be observed that the same arts would no less surely be employed against an unorganized alliance, and with a better prospect of success. Even if reduced to a secondary degree of military power, Germany under continuing militarist rule would remain capable of giving trouble in this way. No better counter-check, indeed no other, than a well-knit league of the law-abiding nations has been suggested. ”

“ It would be in a far stronger position to resist external 'pressure than ever before, having its independence and freedom from warlike aggression guaranteed by the whole force of the League. It would have for the first time a definite right to a voice in all common counsel, not only in special conventions. An equal vote in all matters is not to be expected ”