The general principle of the Protocol is the prohibition of aggressive war.
Under the Covenant, while the old unlimited right of States to make war is restricted, it is not abolished. There are cases in which the exercise of this right is tolerated; some wars are prohibited and others are legitimate.
In future the position will be different. In no case is any State signatory of the Protocol entitled to undertake on its own sole initiative an offensive war against another signatory State or against any non-signatory State which accepts all the obligations assumed by the signatories under the Protocol.
The prohibition affects only aggressive war. It does not, of course, extend to defensive war. The right of legitimate self-defence continues, as it must, to be respected. The State attacked retains complete liberty to resist by all means in its power any acts of aggression of which it may be the victim. Without waiting for the assistance which it is entitled to receive from the international community, it may and should at once defend itself with its own force. Its interests are identified with the general interest. This is a point on which there can be no doubt.
The same applies when a country employs force with the consent of the Council or the Assembly of the League of Nations under the provisions of the Covenant and the Protocol. This eventuality may arise in two classes of cases: either a State may take part in the collective measures of force decided upon by the League of Nations in aid of one of its Members which is the victim of aggression; or a State may employ force with the authorisation of the Council or the Assembly in order to enforce a decision given in its favour. In the former case, the assistance given to the victim of aggression is indirectly an act of legitimate self-defence. In the latter, force is used in the service of the general interest, which would be threatened if decisions reached by a pacific procedure could be violated with impunity. In all these cases the country resorting to war is not acting on its private initiative but is in a sense the agent and the organ of the community.
It is for this reason that we have not hesitated to speak of the exceptional authorisation of war. It has been proposed that the word "force" should be used in order to avoid any mention of "war"—in order to spare the public that disappointment which it might feel when it found that, notwithstanding the solemn condemnation of war, war was still authorised in exceptional cases. We preferred, however, to recognise the position frankly by retaining the expression "resort to war" which is used in the Covenant. If we said "force" instead of "war," we should not be altering the facts in any way. Moreover, the confession that war is still possible in specific cases has a certain value, because the term describes a definite and well-understood situation, whereas the expression "resort to force" would be liable to be misunderstood, and also because it emphasises the value of the sanctions at the disposal of the community of States bound by the Protocol.
4.—COMPULSORY JURISDICTION OF THE PERMANENT COURT
OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE.
Article 3.
The general principle of the Protocol could not be accepted unless the pacific settlement of all international disputes without distinction were made possible.
This solution has been found, in the first place, in the extension of the compulsory jurisdiction of the Permanent Court of International Justice.