The League of Nations and Its Problems: Three Lectures

by L. Oppenheim

Another was that of Antoine Marini, the Chancellor of Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, who adopted the scheme in 1461. This scheme proposed the foundation of a Federal State to comprise all the existing Christian States and the establishment of a permanent Congress to be seated at Basle in Switzerland, this Congress to be the highest organ of the Federation.

A third scheme was that of Sully, adopted by Henri IV of France, which, in 1603, proposed the division of Europe into fifteen States and the linking together of these into a Federation with a General Council as its highest organ.

And a fourth scheme was that of Emeric Crucée, who, in 1623, proposed the establishment of a Union consisting not only of the Christian States but of all States of the world, with a General Council seated at Venice.

And since that time many other schemes of similar kind have made their appearance, the enumeration and discussion of which is outside our present purpose. So much is certain that all these schemes were Utopian. Nevertheless, a League of Nations having once come into existence, International Law grew more and more, and when in 1625 Hugo Grotius published his immortal work on 'The Law of War and Peace,' the system of International Law offered in his work conquered the world and became the basis of all following development.

V. However, although a League of Nations must be said to have been in existence for about 400 years, because no International Law would have been possible without it, this League of Nations could not, and was not intended to, prevent war between its members. I say: it could not prevent war. Why not? It could not prevent war on account of the conditions which prevailed within the international society from the Middle Ages till, say, the outbreak of the present war. These conditions are intimately connected with the growth of the several States of Europe.

Whereas the family, the tribe, and the race are natural products, the nation as well as the State are products of historical development. All nations are blends of more or less different races, and all States were originally founded on force: strong rulers subjected neighbouring tribes and peoples to their sway and thus formed coherent nations. Most of the States in Europe are the product of the activity of strong dynasties which through war and conquest, and through marriage and purchase, united under one sovereign the lands which form the States and the peoples which form the nations. Up to the time of the French Revolution, throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, all wars were either wars of religion, or dynastic wars fought for the increase of the territory under the sway of the dynasties concerned, or so-called colonial wars fought for the acquisition of transoceanic colonies. It was not till the nineteenth century that wars for the purpose of national unity broke out, and dynastic wars began gradually to disappear. During the nineteenth century the nations, so to say, found themselves; some kind of constitutional government was everywhere introduced; and democracy became the ideal, although it was by no means everywhere realised.

VI. It is for this reason that the outbreak of the present war is epoch-making, because it has become apparent that, whatever may be the war aims of the belligerents, at bottom this World War is a fight between the ideal of democracy and constitutional government on the one hand, and autocratic government and militarism on the other. Everywhere the conviction has become prevalent that things cannot remain as they were before the outbreak of the present war, and therefore the demand for a League of Nations, or—I had better say—for a new League of Nations to take the place of that which has been in existence for about 400 years, has arisen.

Now what is new in the desired new League of Nations?

Firstly, this new League would be founded upon a solemn treaty, whereas the League of Nations hitherto was only based upon custom.

Secondly, for the purpose of making war rarer or of abolishing it altogether, this new League of Nations would enact the rule that no State is allowed to resort to arms without previously having submitted the dispute to an International Court or a Council of Conciliation.