Armaments and the French Experiment

1939 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimon A. Doukas
Keyword(s):  
Private Enterprise ◽  
National Policy ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Armed Force

Resort to armed force as an instrument of national policy, though often outlawed and denounced by common consent, seems as inevitable today as ever before. When the Covenant of the League of Nations was adopted, it was agreed “that the manufacture by private enterprise of munitions and implements of war is open to grave objections” (Art. 8, Sec. 5). Shortly after, on September 10, 1919, 28 nations assembled at St. Germain-en-Laye and Paris to sign a Convention for the Control of the Trade in Arms and Ammunition. This was followed by a conference to consider the draft of a new convention which was called by the League and met in Geneva on May 4, 1924. The adoption of the Arms Traffic Convention the following year was hailed everywhere as a signal victory.

The Peace Ballot and the Public

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.A. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Private Enterprise ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Armed Force ◽  
Popular Support ◽  
The Public ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
British People

In 1934-35 more than 11 ½ million adults in Great Britain completed the famous “Peace Ballot” (the official title was A National Declaration on the League of Nations and Armaments) designed to test, and indeed to demonstrate, popular support for the League and “the collective peace system.” The massive response exceeded all expectations and greatly impressed observers. It was, said the New Statesman, “the most remarkable popular referendum ever initiated and carried through by private enterprise.”But what did the Ballot demonstrate? Did it return a “plain and decisive” answer as Lord Cecil of Chelwood, President of the League of Nations Union and Chairman of the National Referendum Committee, claimed?Supporters of the Ballot had no doubt about the national verdict. Britons, said Cecil, had shown “overwhelming approval” of the collective system. They were, according to Winston Churchill, “willing, and indeed resolved, to go to war in a righteous cause,” provided that all action was taken under the auspices of the League. The British people were ready to fulfill their obligations under the Covenant, Philip Noel-Baker later wrote. The country was prepared to stop Mussolini by armed force if that should be required.

The Idea of Just War

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-142
Author(s):  
Martin Wight
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Law ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
National Policy ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Holy War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War

In this note Wight describes pendulum swings in opinion about the requirements of justice in war in Western civilization since the Middle Ages. Medieval Catholicism emphasized the righteousness of the ruler’s cause and asserted orthodoxy against infidels or heretics. Prominent writers on international law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Gentili, Grotius, and Vattel) marked a shift toward secularization and rationalism (with both sides usually able to claim justice) and restraint in the laws of war governing the methods of combat. Moser’s study of international law, published in 1777–1780, was representative of an ‘age of positivism’ (1763–1918) in which all sovereign states had a right to resort to war or to remain neutral, while codifying obligations concerning the conduct of war. The Covenant of the League of Nations, signed in 1919, initiated a return to restrictions on the right to resort to war, reinforced by the 1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact, also known as the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, which was upheld by the Nuremberg Tribunals. The Covenant ruled out aggression as unjust, while action in defence of the Covenant would be just by enforcing collective security. The Soviet Union reintroduced Holy War with its view of the Great Patriotic War (World War II) and the Cold War as just causes that advanced Communist revolutionary objectives. Counter-force strategies of nuclear deterrence may be regarded as strengthening restraint in the methods of war, compared to counter-value or ‘anti-city’ approaches.

scholarly journals The Paris Covenant for a League of Nations

1919 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Howard Taft
Keyword(s):  
National Policy ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
International Court

We are here to-night in sight of a league of peace, of what I have ever regarded as the “Promised Land.” Such a war as the last is a hideous blot on our Christian civilization. The inconsistency is as foul as was slavery under the Declaration of Independence. If Christian nations cannot now be brought into a united effort to suppress a recurrence of such a contest it will be a shame to modern society.During my administration I attempted to secure treaties of universal arbitration between this country and France and England, by which all issues depending for their settlement upon legal principles were to be submitted to an international court for final decision. These treaties were emasculated by the senate, yielding to the spirit which proceeds, unconsciously doubtless, but truly, from the conviction that the only thing that will secure to a nation the justice it wishes to secure is force; that agreements between nations to settle controversies justly and peaceably should never be given any weight in national policy; that in dealing between civilized nations we must assume that each nation is conspiring to deprive us of our independence and our prosperity; that there is no impartial tribunal to which we can entrust the decision of any question vitally affecting our interests or our honor, and that we can afford to make no agreement from which we may not immediately withdraw, and whose temporary operation to our detriment may not be expressly a ground for ending it.

scholarly journals The Use of Force to Prevent War? The Bryce Group's “Proposals for the Avoidance of War,” 1914–15

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 308-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sakiko Kaiga
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Armed Force ◽  
Collective Security ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
Moral Force ◽  
Study Circle ◽  
Prevention Plan

AbstractThis article reappraises the debate about war prevention in the Bryce Group, the first study circle in Britain to devise a plan for the League of Nations. While scholars have tended to associate pro–league of nations activists with idealism, more focused accounts of the group have mostly depicted its postwar plan as a product of realistic thinking. Drawing on the underused manuscripts of the intellectual founders of the League of Nations, this study first reveals that their early thinking defies simple categorization. Not only was their war prevention plan realistic about the role of armed force but it also depended critically on idealistic expectations about the moral force of public opinion. This article shows that realistic and idealistic views could rarely be separated, and both developed the group's plan for peace, which incorporated the collective use of force as a crucial element of the postwar order. A mixture of the two views, however, hardly ensured consistencies and a balance between them. The paradox of collective security discussed by the group in 1914–15—that peace at least in part rested on the threat of force—was unresolved by the foundation of the League, and remains intact to this day.

Questions of State Succession Raised by the German Annexation of Austria

1938 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Wilford Garner
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Armed Force ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
The Status ◽  
State Succession ◽  
German Reich

The recent annexation of Austria to the German Reich (the terms “incorporation” or “absorption” are preferred by some) has raised certain questions of international law or practice with which other states have already had, or will have, to deal and upon some of which Germany also will be called upon to take a position. Among the questions already raised or which may be raised are the following: (1) Assuming that the annexation was brought about by the use of armed force against Austria without her consent and in violation of treaties or international law, should those states which have bound themselves by treaties not to recognize the validity of territorial annexations made under such circumstances, accord de jure recognition to the German annexation of Austria? (2) What effect did the annexation have on the status and obligations of Austria as a member of the League of Nations? (3) What effect did it have on the status of the treaties between Austria and other countries which were in force at the time of the annexation? (4) Did the application of Germany’s treaties with other states extend automatically, following the annexation, to the territory of Austria? (5) Is Germany bound by the generally recognized rules of international law to assume the payment of the debts of the former Austrian state, including those of the local governments of Austria?

National Policy, Global Giants

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Wormald ◽  
Kim Rennick
Keyword(s):  
National Policy
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