These two points of view do represent undoubtedly fundamental
differences of political attitude, and you will find that the two sets
of advocates or supporters of the League whom I have tried to describe,
will inevitably regard with different emphasis the provisions of the
Covenant, and even the achievements of the League. For if you read the
Covenant you will find two sets of provisions in that document. It does
recognise the two schools, as it were, that I have been describing. It
has a set of provisions which deal with the enforcement, the
safeguarding of peace, and a set of provisions which deal with the
building up of international co-operation. You will notice the two sets
of provisions. There are those aiming directly at the settlement of
disputes without war. This is the central part of the League. It is the
first thing before you can hope to do anything else. Before you can
begin to build up your international spirit you must get rid as far as
you can of the actual menace of war; and in that sense this is the
central part of the Covenant. But, in my view, the most enduring and
perhaps the most important part is that set of provisions which cluster
round the group of articles beginning with Article 10 perhaps, certainly
Article 12, and going on to Article 17--the group which says in effect
that before nations submit their disputes to the arbitrament of war they
are bound to try every other means of settling their differences. It
lays down first the principle that every dispute should come to some
kind of arbitration, either by the new Court of International
Justice--one of the great achievements of the League--or discussion
before a specially constituted Arbitration Court, or failing both, then
discussion before the Council of the League; and Articles 15 and 16
provide that until that discussion has taken place, and until adequate
time has been allowed for the public opinion of the world to operate on
the disputants as the result of that examination, no war is to take
place, and if any war takes place the aggressor is to be regarded as
perhaps what may be called an international outlaw.
Before you begin to build you must have freedom from actual war, and
the provisions have been effective. They are not merely theoretic. I am
not sure whether it is generally recognised, even in so instructed an
assembly as this, how successful these provisions have actually been in
practice. Let me give you briefly two illustrations: the dispute between
Sweden and Finland, and the much more urgent case of the dispute between
Serbia and Albania. In the first case you had a dispute about the
possession of certain islands in the Baltic. It was boiling up to be a
serious danger to the peace of the world. It was referred to the League
for discussion. It was before the existence of the International Court.
A special tribunal was constituted. The matter was threshed out with
great elaboration; a decision was come to which, it is interesting to
observe, was a decision against the stronger of the two parties. It was
accepted, not with enthusiasm by the party that lost, but with great
loyalty. It has been adopted, worked out in its details by other organs
of the League, and as far as one can tell, as far as it is safe to
prophesy about anything, it has absolutely closed that dispute, and the
two countries are living in a greater degree of amity than existed
before the dispute became acute.
But the Albanian case is stronger. You had a very striking case: a small
country only just struggling into international existence. Albania had
only just been created before the war as an independent State, and
during the war its independence had in effect vanished. The first thing
that happened was its application for membership of the League. That
was granted, and thereby Albania came into existence really for the
first time as an independent State. Then came its effort to secure the
boundaries to which it was entitled, which had been provisionally
awarded to it before the war. While that dispute was still unsettled,
its neighbour, following some rather disastrous examples given by
greater people in Europe, thought to solve the question by seizing even
more of the land of Albania than it already occupied. Thereupon the
Articles of the Covenant were brought into operation. The Council was
hastily summoned within a few days. It was known that this country was
prepared to advocate before that Council the adoption of the coercive
measures described in Article 16. The Council met, and the aggressive
State immediately recognised that as a member of the League it had no
course open but to comply with its obligations, and that as a prudent
State it dared not face the danger which would be caused to it by the
operation of Article 16. Immediately, before the dispute had actually
been developed, before the Council, the Serbians announced that they
were prepared to withdraw from Albanian territory, and gave orders to
their troops to retire beyond the boundary. Let us recognise that this
decision having been come to, it was carried out with absolute loyalty
and completeness. The troops withdrew. The territory was restored to
Albania without a hitch. No ill-feeling remains behind, and the next
thing we hear is that a commercial treaty is entered into between the
two States, so that they can live in peace and amity together.