Part 3

THIRD LECTURE: ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE AND MEDIATION WITHIN THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 57

I. Administration of Justice within the League is a question of International Courts, but it is incorrect to assert that International Legislation necessitates the existence of International Courts 60

II. The Permanent Court of Arbitration created by the First Hague Peace Conference 61

III. The difficulties connected with International Administration of Justice by International Courts 62

IV. The necessity for a Court of Appeal above the International Court of First Instance 63

V. The difficulties connected with the setting up and manning of International Courts of Justice 64

VI. Details of a scheme which recommends itself because it distinguishes between the Court as a whole and the several Benches which would be called upon to decide the cases 65

VII. The advantages of the recommended scheme 67

VIII. A necessary provision for so-called complex cases of dispute 68

IX. A necessary provision with regard to the notorious clause rebus sic stantibus 69

X. The two starting points for a satisfactory proposal concerning International Mediation by International Councils of Conciliation. Article 8 of the Hague Convention concerning Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. The Permanent International Commissions of the Bryan Peace Treaties 70

XI. Details of a scheme which recommends itself for the establishment of International Councils of Conciliation 72

XII. The question of disarmament 74

XIII. The assertion that States renounce their sovereignty by entering into the League 75

XIV. Conclusion: Can it be expected that, in case of a great conflict of interests, all the members of the League will faithfully carry out their engagements? 78

ALPHABETICAL INDEX 81

FIRST LECTURE

THE AIMS OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

SYNOPSIS

I. The purpose of the three Lectures is to draw attention to the links which connect the proposed League of Nations with the past, to the difficulties involved in the proposal, and to the way in which they can be overcome.

II. The conception of a League of Nations is not new, but is as old as International Law, because any kind of International Law and some kind of a League of Nations are interdependent and correlative.

III. During antiquity no International Law in the modern sense of the term was possible, because the common interests which could force a number of independent States into a community of States were lacking.

IV. But during the second part of the Middle Ages matters began to change. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries an International Law, and with it a kind of League of Nations, became a necessity and therefore grew by custom. At the same time arose the first schemes for a League of Nations guaranteeing permanent peace, namely those of Pierre Dubois (1305), Antoine Marini (1461), Sully (1603), and Emeric Crucée (1623). Hugo Grotius' immortal work on 'The Law of War and Peace' (1625).

V. The League of Nations thus evolved by custom could not undertake to prevent wars; the conditions prevailing up to the outbreak of the French Revolution made it impossible; it was only during the nineteenth century that the principle of nationality made growth.

VI. The outbreak of the present World War is epoch-making because it is at bottom a fight between the principle of democratic and constitutional government and the principle of militarism and autocratic government. The three new points in the present demand for a League of Nations.

VII. How and why the peremptory demand for a new League of Nations arose, and its connection with so-called Internationalism.

VIII. The League of Nations now aimed at is not really a League of Nations but of States. The ideal of the National State.

IX. The two reasons why the establishment of a new League of Nations is conditioned by the utter defeat of the Central Powers.