The Geneva Protocol

by David Hunter Miller

Under Article 17 of the Protocol, a Disarmament Conference to which all States of the world are to be invited is to meet at Geneva on June 15th, 1925. It is made the duty of the Council to draw up a general programme for reduction and limitation of armaments to be laid before the Conference and to be communicated to the various Governments not later than March 15th, 1925. The provision to this effect says that the Council shall give due regard to the undertakings of the Protocol regarding sanctions, but the preparation of this general programme is in substantial accord with Article 8 of the Covenant.

The Assembly adopted a quite elaborate resolution[[1]] regarding this Conference. This resolution makes seven or eight suggestions in general terms for the agenda of the Disarmament Conference. While the resolution was adopted, it was pointed out in the discussion that the Council has a perfectly free hand in the matter and that the requests of the Assembly regarding the agenda were nothing more than requests. There is perhaps no occasion to go over them in detail, but one or two points may be mentioned.

The matter of demilitarized zones figures in this Assembly list. As such zones are specifically mentioned in Articles 9 and 10 of the Protocol there is no doubt that this is one of the questions that would be on the agenda. Another suggestion of the Assembly for the agenda of the Conference is "the control and investigation of armaments in the contracting States." Such control and investigation were a part of the so-called American Plan,[[2]] and in view of the fact that the control and investigation of the armaments of the former enemy States are now before the League, there can be no doubt that this matter also would be on the agenda of the Disarmament Conference prepared by the Council.

It was pointed out previously[[3]] that the date of the Disarmament Conference may be postponed. It now seems very likely that it will be.[[4]] Indeed, I feel that there was a little too much optimism at Geneva in fixing the date as early as June 15th, 1925, involving the completion of a programme by March 15th.

Of course, in getting up a programme of general disarmament, and an agenda for the Conference on Disarmament, it is true that the Council would have available the advice of the Permanent Military Commission and of the different bureaus of the Secretariat. Even so, the task of finishing these preparations in three or four months, getting them approved by the Council and also by at least the chief of the interested Governments, is one that seems to me to be very doubtful of accomplishment.

It is perhaps not generally understood what an amount of work and how great a number of questions are involved in such discussions as are proposed. There are something like twenty European Governments that are vitally interested. Some of these Governments have quite different points of view and all of them have their military, naval, air and chemical programmes in force and subject to the control of their own Parliaments.[[5]] The idea of a general reduction of armaments involves, at least provisionally, the recasting of the entire military system of Europe. It is complicated by numerous possibilities of regional agreements which in themselves would create new problems of complexity.

Furthermore, it is not generally recognized that a great deal of the work of such a Conference as this has to be done in advance. Doubtless no Conference in plenary session ever drew up a paper; no Legislature ever wrote a law. The utmost that any such body can do is to consider concrete proposals drawn up often by one individual, but certainly always by very small groups. I venture to say that ten lawyers could hardly draw a deed without appointing a sub-committee. The success or failure of the Disarmament Conference will very largely depend on the care and judgment used in the preparations for its meeting.

We can look back on the Washington Conference and see the truth of some of these observations there. That Conference dealt with only a portion of the field of naval armaments, among only five powers, only three of which had any substantial naval force. The naval staffs of the countries particularly interested had to prepare in advance elaborate studies, and yet with all this the Conference lasted nearly three months. Certainly the task of a general conference on disarmament is very much greater than that of the Washington Conference was.

It took nearly four months to draw up the Treaty of Versailles, which is by far the most elaborate and complex international agreement ever written. In the circumstances this was a remarkably short time. The most serious detailed criticism that I have seen of the time involved suggests that it might have been two or three weeks less. It is to be remembered, however, that the Peace Conference worked at that time under a perfectly enormous pressure from all sides to complete its task, which, as a matter of fact, would never have been completed within anything like the time taken if the decisions had not finally been left to three or four men to take.