This paragraph gave rise to a difference of opinion as to what States are entitled to sit on the Council when it considered questions arising under Article 213 of the Treaty of Versailles and similar Articles in the other Peace Treaties relating to the investigations by the Council of the armaments of Germany and other countries. When the question came up, the Council took the opinion of Jurists on it and reached a common sense result.[[1]] Under a general clause giving jurisdiction to the Court in all matters of interpretation,[[2]] it would seem that any Member of the League could require a question as to the composition of the Council on a particular occasion to be decided by the Court before the Council could meet. It is obvious that any such method of regulating procedure would give rise to impossibilities which should be avoided.
[[1]] See League of Nations Official Journal, July, 1924, p. 922 and Cmd. 2287 (Miscellaneous No. 20, 1924), p. 16.
[[2]] Many people suppose that the Supreme Court of the United States has such general powers regarding our Constitution, but this is not so. Read, for example, Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution; and see Massachusetts v. Melton, 262 U. S., 447.
CHAPTER XX.
THE "AMENDED" COVENANT.
I trust that no one appreciates better than myself that examination of a document bit by bit and piece by piece tends to blind the vision. One sees the trees and not the forest. Worse than that, one gets a false vision, a picture, if I may change the metaphor, of the buttons on the coat but not of the man wearing the coat and still less of the soul within the man.