Accordingly, the "grounds" to be laid down by the Conference for the Reduction of Armaments, on which it may be declared by the Council that the Plan for the Reduction of Armaments has not been carried out, will mean, I take it, the laying down of some requirement that the Plan for the Reduction of Armaments be formally ratified within a time stated by a certain number of States, including certain named States; in default whereof, the Council may and will declare the Plan for the Reduction of Armaments not to have been carried out.
It is to be observed that the Protocol in the last paragraph of Article 21 speaks of the possibility of a Signatory failing to "comply" with the reduction of armaments Plan "after the expiration of the period fixed by the Conference."
This refers, I think, to a failure by a particular Signatory to ratify the Plan for the Reduction of Armaments, the effect being, so far as Article 21 is concerned, that such Signatory would be bound by the terms of the Protocol but could not benefit by them.
The language of this last paragraph of Article 21 is, however, broad enough to include the case of a State which had ratified the Treaty containing the Plan for the Reduction of Armaments and had then failed to carry out its agreement regarding such reduction.
It will thus be seen that the Protocol of Geneva is wholly dependent upon the success of the Conference for the Reduction of Armaments; and the success of that Conference depends wholly upon the voluntary agreement then made. There is nothing in the Protocol which requires the States represented at the Conference to agree to any particular plan for the reduction of armaments; the assent which they may give to such plan must be voluntary.
The question of the proceedings of the Disarmament Conference will be discussed hereafter.[[4]]
However, there is one point that may be mentioned here. The Plan for the Reduction of Armaments drawn up by the Conference or, in other words, the Treaty or Treaties drawn up by that Conference, will not be perpetual in their operation. No plan for disarmament, no treaty regarding reduction of armaments could possibly be perpetual in its detailed provisions. Not only does this follow from the nature of such an agreement, but it is explicitly laid down in Article 8 of the Covenant that any such Plan is to be subject to reconsideration and revision at least every ten years. Accordingly, the Treaty or Treaties for the Reduction of Armaments to be drawn up by the Conference will be in this sense temporary, that they will have a fixed limit of time for their operation, precisely as the Treaty Limiting Naval Armament drawn up at the Washington Conference may be terminated in 1936.[[5]]
There is no provision made in the Protocol of Geneva for the withdrawal of any State from its obligations, assuming that those obligations come finally into force. On its face the Protocol is therefore perpetual; but it is not really so. The obligations of the Protocol are so intertwined with the obligations of the Covenant that there is no doubt in my mind that the withdrawal from the League by a Member thereof (when bound by the Protocol) would release that State from the obligations of the Protocol as well as from the obligations of the Covenant.