The project for the establishment of a permanent code of international character met at The Hague, and has always met, one formidable obstacle: How can all the states be represented in a body which must necessarily be small?
It is noted that the omission of some of them is considered as a flagrant violence of juridical equality and derogatory to the sovereignty of those states.
In the second meeting of the Council, held in London, this topic was carefully studied, and after a brilliant report by Bourgeois, it was agreed to submit the matter to a committee of prominent internationalists in order that they might devise means to obviate such difficulties as impeded the realization of the purpose. Among those international figures two South Americans were included: Clovis Bevilacqua and Dr. Drago, the name of the latter now being associated with sad memories, a man for whom Venezuela retains grateful and respectful affection.
Another project of the League is the organization of labor. Do you know any human beings more worthy of the consideration of the mighty and the pity of the world than the child, the woman and the workman who spends his strength in fruitful labor?
After having presented the more remote antecedents and the genesis of the Covenant of the League, as well as the ends it aims at and the means it follows to realize them, it only remains to say something of the working of the new organism of the international law created by the Covenant. In this I shall follow the Covenant itself:
MEMBERS OF THE LEAGUE
The members of the League are of two classes, the original members and those later incorporated.
The original members are:
1. The Allied and Associated Powers signatory of the Treaty of Peace.
2. States invited, which may have acceded without reservations to the Covenant.