Essays in Liberalism | Page 4

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.

THE SPIRIT OF THE LEAGUE
I want to emphasise one point about these two cases. It is not so much
that the coercive powers provided in the Covenant were effectively
used. In Sweden and Finland they never came into the question at all,
and in the other case there was merely a suggestion of their operation.
What really brought about a settlement of these two disputes was that
the countries concerned really desired peace, and were really anxious to
comply with their obligations as members of the League of Nations.
That is the essential thing--the League spirit. And if you want to see
how essential it is you have to compare another international incident:
the dispute between Poland and Lithuania, where the League spirit was
conspicuous by its absence. There you had a dispute of the same
character. But ultimately you did secure this: that from the date of the
intervention of the League till the present day--about two years--there
has been no fighting; actual hostilities were put an end to. Though that
is in itself an immensely satisfactory result, and an essential
preliminary for all future international progress, yet one must