No state in the world at that time was prepared to accept foreign jurisdiction concerning the question of whether its decisions on basic questions of its very existence were justified or not.

Kellogg had declared to all the nine states participating in the negotiations, in his note of 25 June 1928:[[23]]

“...The right of self-defense...is inherent in every sovereign state and is implicit in every treaty. Every nation...is alone competent to decide whether circumstances require recourse to war in self-defense.”

The friends of peace were cruelly disappointed. What was the use of such a treaty anyway? They were only too right. Very soon afterward they heard with even greater grief of the course of the discussions in the American Senate. The ratification was, it is true, passed with 85 votes against 1, with a few abstentions; but if, behind the signatures of the contracting states there was no material agreement, there was even less behind the result of the vote in the Senate of that world power which was, as far as the conception and initiative was concerned, the leading one.

The discussions in the Senate, which will remain memorable for all time because of their earnest and profound character, showed—and several senators expressly said so—that the opinions of the senators were oscillating between two poles which were worlds apart. For some the treaty really meant a turning-point in world history; to others it appeared worthless, or at best a feeble or friendly gesture, a popular slogan, a sort of international embrace; to yet others as fertile soil for all the wars of the future, a gigantic piece of hypocrisy, as the legalization of war or even of British world control, or as a guarantee of the unjust status quo of Versailles for France and Great Britain.

Some senators criticized the utter vagueness of the stipulations of the treaty even more bitterly than the Russian note. And if Kellogg’s declaration about the right of self-defense, which, according to the will of the signatory states, was an integral part of the treaty, was taken literally: What kind of war was then forbidden?[[24]] Sarcastic and ironical words were used in the Senate.

Nothing was gained by this Paris Pact if everything were to remain as at its conclusion. In the opinion of the great American expert on international law, Philip Marshall Brown, the pact unwittingly engendered by its ineptness the horrible specter of “undeclared war.”[[25]]

Those, Germans or non-Germans, who fought against Versailles because progress was blocked, and those, Germans or non-Germans, who criticized the League of Nations because it did more harm than good to the will toward progress, had all rejoiced for nothing at the end of August 1928. The decisive step had not been taken.

But above all the one thing which, though not sufficient in itself, is indispensable if a guarantee of peace is really to be created, the one thing that is necessary in the unanimous opinion of all who reckon with human frailty, was never tackled: To create a procedure by which the community of states, even against the will of the possessor, can change conditions that have become intolerable, in order to provide life with the safety valve it must have if it is to be spared an explosion.

The individual state, if at all, can avoid revolutions only by good legislation and an early adjustment of order to changing conditions; and the same is true of the community of states. Wilson also had this fundamental principle in mind, as we saw. One of the great British experts on international law, one of the enthusiastic, unconditional, and progressive adherents of the Paris Pact, McNair, took this into account too when, in 1936, he wanted to see placed beside collective force the collective and peaceful revision of conditions which had become dangerous.[[26]] And it was also taken into account by the American experts on international law, Borchard[[27]] and Fenwick,[[28]] in their warning illustration of the situation as regards international law shortly before the second World War. The Reich Government, by the way, had pointed out this problem, which overshadowed all others, in Stresemann’s note to the American Ambassador, dated 27 April 1928, when unconditionally agreeing to Kellogg’s proposal.[[29]]