THE SYSTEM OF MANDATES
In the foregoing review of the opposite views held by the President and
by me in regard to the plan for a League of Nations and specifically in
regard to the Covenant as originally drawn and as revised, mention was
made of the proposed mandatory system as one of the subjects concerning
which we were not in agreement. My objections to the system were
advanced chiefly on the ground of the legal difficulties which it
presented because it seemed probable that the President would give more
weight to my opinion on that ground than on one which concerned the
policy of adopting the system. Viewed from the latter standpoint it
appeared to me most unwise for the President to propose a plan, in which
the United States would be expected to participate and which, if it did
participate, would involve it in the political quarrels of the Old
World. To do so would manifestly require a departure from the
traditional American policy of keeping aloof from the political
jealousies and broils of Europe. Without denying that present conditions
have, of necessity, modified the old policy of isolation and without
minimizing the influence of that fact on the conduct of American foreign
affairs, it did not seem essential for the United States to become the
guardian of any of the peoples of the Near East, who were aspiring to
become independent nationalities, a guardianship which the President
held to be a duty that the United States was bound to perform as its
share of the burden imposed by the international coöperation which he
considered vital to the new world order.
The question of mandates issuing from the League of Nations was
discussed at length by the Council of Ten in connection with the
disposition and future control of the German colonies and incidentally
as to the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. The discussions were
chiefly along the lines of practicability, of policy, and of moral
obligation. The President's strong support of the mandatory system and
his equally strong objection to the idea of _condominium_ showed that
his mind was made up in favor of the issuance of mandates by the League.
Since it would have been highly improper for me to oppose openly a
policy which the President had declared under his constitutional
authority, there was no proper opportunity to present the legal
difficulties of the system to the Council.
However, the seriousness of these difficulties and the possible troubles
and controversies which might be anticipated from attempting to put the
system into operation induced me, after one of the sessions of the
Council of Ten, to state briefly to the President some of the serious
objections to League mandates from the standpoint of international law
and the philosophy of government. President Wilson listened with his
usual attentiveness to what I had to say, though the objections
evidently did not appeal to him, as he characterized them as "mere
technicalities" which could be cured or disregarded. Impressed myself
with the importance of these "technicalities" and their direct bearing
on the policy of adopting the mandatory system, I later, on February 2,
1919, embodied them in a memorandum. At the time I hoped and believed
that the negotiation of the completed Covenant might be postponed and
that there would be another opportunity to raise the question. The
memorandum, prepared with this end in view, is as follows:
"The system of 'mandatories under the League of Nations,' when
applied to territories which were formerly colonies of Germany, the
system which has been practically adopted and will be written into
the plan for the League, raises some interesting and difficult
questions:
"The one, which is the most prominent since it enters into nearly all
of the international problems presented, is--Where does the
sovereignty over these territories reside?
"Sovereignty is inherent in the very conception of government. It
cannot be destroyed, though it may be absorbed by another sovereignty
either by compulsion or cession. When the Germans were ousted from
their colonies, the sovereignty passed to the power or powers which
took possession. The location of the sovereignty up to the present is
clear, but with the introduction of the League of Nations as an
international primate superior to the conquerors some rather
perplexing questions will have to be answered.
"Do those who have seized the sovereignty transfer it or does Germany
transfer it to the League of Nations? If so, how?
"Does the League assume possession of the sovereignty on its
renunciation by Germany? If so, how?
"Does the League merely direct the disposition of the sovereignty
without taking possession of it?
"Assuming that the latter question is answered in the affirmative,
then after such disposition of the right to exercise sovereignty,
which will presumably be a limited right, where does the actual
sovereignty reside?
"The appointment of a mandatory to exercise sovereign rights over
territory is to create an agent for the real sovereign. But who is
the real sovereign?
"Is the League of Nations the sovereign, or is it a common agent of
the nations composing the League, to whom is confided solely the duty
of naming the mandatory and issuing the mandate?
"If the League is the sovereign, can it avoid responsibility for the
misconduct of the mandatory, its agent?
"If it is not the League, who is responsible for the mandatory's
conduct?
"Assuming that the mandatory in faithfully performing the provisions
of the mandate unavoidably works an injustice upon another party, can
or ought the mandatory to be held responsible? If not, how can the
injured party obtain redress? Manifestly the answer is, 'From the
sovereign,' but who is the sovereign?
"In the Treaty of Peace Germany will be called upon to renounce
sovereignty over her colonial possessions. To whom will the
sovereignty pass?
"If the reply is, 'The League of Nations,' the question is: Does the
League possess the attributes of an independent state so that it can
function as an owner of territory? If so, what is it? A world state?
"If the League does not constitute a world state, then the
sovereignty would have to pass to some national state. What national
state? What would be the relation of the national state to
the League?
"If the League is to receive title to the sovereignty, what officers
of the League are empowered to receive it and to transfer its
exercise to a mandatory?
"What form of acceptance should be adopted?
"Would every nation which is a member of the League have to give its
representatives full powers to accept the title?
"Assuming that certain members decline to issue such powers or to
accept title as to one or more of the territories, what relation
would those members have to the mandatory named?"
There is no attempt in the memorandum to analyze or classify the queries
raised, and, as I review them in the light of the terms of the Treaty of
Versailles, I do not think that some of them can be asked with any
helpful purpose. On the other hand, many of the questions, I believe the
large majority, were as pertinent after the Treaty was completed as they
were when the memorandum was made.
As Colonel House was the other member of the Commission on the League of
Nations and would have to consider the practicability and expediency of
including the mandatory system in the Covenant, I read the memorandum to
him stating that I had orally presented most of the questions to the
President who characterized them as "legal technicalities" and for that
reason unimportant. I said to the Colonel that I differed with the
President, as I hoped he did, not only as to the importance of
considering the difficulties raised by the questions before the system
of mandates was adopted, but also as to the importance of viewing from
every standpoint the wisdom of the system and the difficulties that
might arise in its practical operation. I stated that, in my opinion, a
simpler and better plan was to transfer the sovereignty over territory
to a particular nation by a treaty of cession under such terms as seemed
wise and, in the case of some of the newly erected states, to have them
execute treaties accepting protectorates by Powers mutually acceptable
to those states and to the League of Nations.
Colonel House, though he listened attentively to the memorandum and to
my suggestions, did not seem convinced of the importance of the
questions or of the advantages of adopting any other plan than that of
the proposed mandatory system. To abandon the system meant to abandon
one of the ideas of international supervision, which the President
especially cherished and strongly advocated. It meant also to surrender
one of the proposed functions of the League as an agent in carrying out
the peace settlements under the Treaty, functions which would form the
basis of an argument in favor of the organization of the League and
furnish a practical reason for its existence. Of course the presumed
arguments against the abandonment of mandates may not have been
considered, but at the time I believed that they were potent with
Colonel House and with the President. The subsequent advocacy of the
system by these two influential members of the Commission on the League
of Nations, which resulted in its adoption, in no way lessened my belief
as to the reasons for their support.
The mandatory system, a product of the creative mind of General Smuts,
was a novelty in international relations which appealed strongly to
those who preferred to adopt unusual and untried methods rather than to
accept those which had been tested by experience and found practical of
operation. The self-satisfaction of inventing something new or of
evolving a new theory is inherent with not a few men. They are
determined to try out their ideas and are impatient of opposition which
seeks to prevent the experiment. In fact opposition seems sometimes to
enhance the virtue of a novelty in the minds of those who propose or
advocate its adoption. Many reformers suffer from this form of vanity.
In the case of the system of mandates its adoption by the Conference and
the conferring on the League of Nations the power to issue mandates
seemed at least to the more conservative thinkers at Paris a very
doubtful venture. It appeared to possess no peculiar advantages over the
old method of transferring and exercising sovereign control either in
providing added protection to the inhabitants of territory subject to a
mandate or greater certainty of international equality in the matter of
commerce and trade, the two principal arguments urged in favor of the
proposed system.
If the advocates of the system intended to avoid through its operation
the appearance of taking enemy territory as the spoils of war, it was a
subterfuge which deceived no one. It seemed obvious from the very first
that the Powers, which under the old practice would have obtained
sovereignty over certain conquered territories, would not be denied
mandates over those territories. The League of Nations might reserve in
the mandate a right of supervision of administration and even of
revocation of authority, but that right would be nominal and of little,
if any, real value provided the mandatory was one of the Great Powers as
it undoubtedly would be. The almost irresistible conclusion is that the
protagonists of the theory saw in it a means of clothing the League of
Nations with an apparent usefulness which justified the League by making
it the guardian of uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples and the
international agent to watch over and prevent any deviation from the
principle of equality in the commercial and industrial development of
the mandated territories.
It may appear surprising that the Great Powers so readily gave their
support to the new method of obtaining an apparently limited control
over the conquered territories, and did not seek to obtain complete
sovereignty over them. It is not necessary to look far for a sufficient
and very practical reason. If the colonial possessions of Germany had,
under the old practice, been divided among the victorious Powers and
been ceded to them directly in full sovereignty, Germany might justly
have asked that the value of such territorial cessions be applied on any
war indemnities to which the Powers were entitled. On the other hand,
the League of Nations in the distribution of mandates would presumably
do so in the interests of the inhabitants of the colonies and the
mandates would be accepted by the Powers as a duty and not to obtain new
possessions. Thus under the mandatory system Germany lost her
territorial assets, which might have greatly reduced her financial debt
to the Allies, while the latter obtained the German colonial possessions
without the loss of any of their claims for indemnity. In actual
operation the apparent altruism of the mandatory system worked in favor
of the selfish and material interests of the Powers which accepted the
mandates. And the same may be said of the dismemberment of Turkey. It
should not be a matter of surprise, therefore, that the President found
little opposition to the adoption of his theory, or, to be more
accurate, of the Smuts theory, on the part of the European statesmen.
There was one case, however, in which the issuance of a mandate appeared
to have a definite and practical value and to be superior to a direct
transfer of complete sovereignty or of the conditional sovereignty
resulting from the establishment of a protectorate. The case was that of
a territory with or without a national government, which, not being
self-supporting and not sufficiently strong to protect its borders from
aggressive neighbors, or its people sufficiently enlightened to govern
themselves properly, would be a constant source of expense instead of
profit to the Power, which as its protector and tutor became its
overlord. Under such conditions there was more probability of persuading
a nation inspired by humanitarian and altruistic motives to assume the
burden for the common good under the mandatory system than under the old
method of cession or of protectorate. As to nations, however, which
placed national interests first and made selfishness the standard of
international policy it was to be assumed that an appeal under either
system would be ineffective.
The truth of this was very apparent at Paris. In the tentative
distribution of mandates among the Powers, which took place on the
strong presumption that the mandatory system would be adopted, the
principal European Powers appeared to be willing and even eager to
become mandatories over territories possessing natural resources which
could be profitably developed and showed an unwillingness to accept
mandates for territories which, barren of mineral or agricultural
wealth, would be continuing liabilities rather than assets. This is not
stated by way of criticism, but only in explanation of what took place.
From the beginning to the end of the discussions on mandates and their
distribution among the Powers it was repeatedly declared that the United
States ought to participate in the general plan for the upbuilding of
the new states which under mandatories would finally become independent
nationalities, but it was never, to my knowledge, proposed, except by
the inhabitants of the region in question, that the United States should
accept a mandate for Syria or the Asiatic coast of the Aegean Sea. Those
regions were rich in natural resources and their economic future under a
stable government was bright. Expenditures in their behalf and the
direction of their public affairs would bring ample returns to the
mandatory nations. On the other hand, there was a sustained
propaganda--for it amounted to that--in favor of the United States
assuming mandates over Armenia and the municipal district of
Constantinople, both of which, if limited by the boundaries which it was
then purposed to draw, would be a constant financial burden to the Power
accepting the mandate, and, in the case of Armenia, would require that
Power to furnish a military force estimated at not less than 50,000 men
to prevent the aggression of warlike neighbors and to preserve domestic
order and peace.
It is not too severe to say of those who engaged in this propaganda that
the purpose was to take advantage of the unselfishness of the American
people and of the altruism and idealism of President Wilson in order to
impose on the United States the burdensome mandates and to divide those
which covered desirable territories among the European Powers. I do not
think that the President realized at the time that an actual propaganda
was going on, and I doubt very much whether he would have believed it if
he had been told. Deeply impressed with the idea that it was the moral
duty of the great and enlightened nations to aid the less fortunate and
especially to guard the nationalities freed from autocratic rule until
they were capable of self-government and self-protection, the President
apparently looked upon the appeals made to him as genuine expressions of
humanitarianism and as manifestations of the opinion of mankind
concerning the part that the United States ought to take in the
reconstruction of the world. His high-mindedness and loftiness of
thought blinded him to the sordidness of purpose which appears to have
induced the general acquiescence in his desired system of mandates, and
the same qualities of mind caused him to listen sympathetically to
proposals, the acceptance of which would give actual proof of the
unselfishness of the United States.
Reading the situation thus and convinced of the objections against the
mandatory system from the point of view of international law, of policy
and of American interests, I opposed the inclusion of the system in the
plan for a League of Nations. In view of the attitude which Mr. Wilson
had taken toward my advice regarding policies I confined the objections
which I presented to him, as I have stated, to those based on legal
difficulties. The objections on the ground of policy were made to
Colonel House in the hope that through him they might reach the
President and open his eyes to the true state of affairs. Whether they
ever did reach him I do not know. Nothing in his subsequent course of
action indicated that they did.
But, if they did, he evidently considered them as invalid as he did the
objections arising from legal difficulties. The system of mandates was
written into the Treaty and a year after the Treaty was signed President
Wilson asked the Congress for authority to accept for the United States
a mandate over Armenia. This the Congress refused. It is needless to
make further comment.