The members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League. The Council shall advise upon the means to assure guaranties for territorial integrity and independence. Any war or threat of war against any member of the League is a matter of concern to the whole League.
SPHERE OF ACTION OF THE LEAGUE
The League, through its contractual character, establishes unavoidable obligations for the states which enter it. Accordingly, the remaining states shall be foreign to it, since it is well known that the conventions impose obligations only on the parties signing them or adhering to them.
But the nature of this international organism itself prevents its being entirely so. The League, considering the ends at which it aims, could not limit its actions to the states forming it, even though those states may be, as they are, almost all the countries of the world. It is obvious that the League, on reducing its armaments, could not see, without concern, another state extraneous to it increasing its own armament.
We have already seen that the Assembly has to take cognizance not only of all that is comprised in its field of action, but of all which may affect the peace of the world, and this gives it an unlimited sphere of action.
In the event of a dispute between a member of the League and a state which is not a member of the League, the state not a member of the League shall be invited (among other measures to preserve peace) to accept the obligations of membership in the League for the purpose of such dispute.
In general, regarding states not members of the League, the League shall endeavor to bring it about that they accept in their disputes the same juridical procedure as the members of the League, that is to say: mediation, arbitration, commissions of investigation, etc.; and the League may even apply the sanctions which the member states may incur for non-fulfillment of the Covenant, and which range from measures of economic isolation to acts of warfare.
A formalistic and narrow criterion alleges that international law is not law at all, since the three elements which make law tangible for all persons,—the legislator, the judge, and the executive, are lacking in it.
The Covenant of the League of Nations undertakes to present all those personages. It offers all to us simultaneously, the legislator par excellence, the judge and the executor of all great decisions, in one and the same organ, namely the vigilant public opinion of humankind.