500.C Covenant/62
The British Embassy to the Department of State
Aide-Mémoire
In execution of the resolution of the Assembly of the League of Nations of September 24th 1929,26 a Committee met recently in Geneva to consider amending the Covenant of the League in order to bring it into harmony with the Pact of Paris.27 The resolution of the Assembly declared that “it is desirable that the terms of the Covenant of the League should not accord any longer to members of the League a right to have recourse to war in cases in which that right has been renounced by the provisions of the Pact of Paris.”
The Committee produced a report dated March 8th 1930,28 proposing that amendments be made in certain articles of the Covenant. These proposed amendments have been discussed by His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom and it has been decided to instruct the British Delegation at the next Assembly of the League of Nations, subject to the concurrence of His Majesty’s Governments in the Dominions, to support the inclusion of the proposed amendments in the Covenant. This decision was brought to the notice of the Secretary of State of the United States by His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in a letter dated April 8th,28a with which Mr. Henderson enclosed a copy of the above-mentioned report of the League Committee.
From page 10 of the report it will be observed that amongst other amendments the Committee proposed the addition of a new paragraph to Article 15 of the Covenant, entitled paragraph 7 bis. The effect of this new paragraph is to provide that in a dispute likely to lead to a rupture the Council of the League of Nations may by a majority ask for an advisory opinion on any point of law involved. In the present state of the Covenant such an opinion can only be asked for by unanimity.
In Article 5 of the Protocol of Accession of the United States of America29 to the Protocol of Signature of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice it is stated that: “With regard to requesting an advisory opinion of the Court in any case covered by [Page 233] the preceding paragraphs, there shall be attributed to an objection of the United States the same force and effect as attaches to a vote against asking for an opinion given by a Member of the League of Nations in the Council or the Assembly.”
The effect of the adoption by the Assembly of the new paragraph to Article 15 of the Covenant will be to diminish the power of Members of the League to prevent an advisory opinion from the Court being requested, and will therefore similarly diminish the power of the United States in this respect, because if the paragraph is adopted the United States will not be able, as they would be if the proposed paragraph is rejected, to block any such request being made to the Court, seeing that the matter will be decided by a majority and not by unanimity.
His Majesty’s Government are therefore anxious to ascertain whether the insertion of the proposed new paragraph 7 bis in Article 15 is likely adversely to affect the prospects of the Senate of the United States accepting the Protocol of Accession of the United States to the Permanent Court of International Justice. Although His Majesty’s Government have decided to support the inclusion of the proposed amendments in the Covenant, the proposed new paragraph 7 bis can well be omitted without affecting the rest of the amendments, and should objection be taken to it in the United States, His Majesty’s Government would for their part be disposed to move that the new paragraph 7 bis should not be accepted.
- League of Nations, Official Journal, Special Supplement No. 75, Records of the Tenth Ordinary Session of the Assembly, pp. 167–169.↩
- Treaty for the Renunciation of War, signed at Paris, August 27, 1928, Foreign Relations, 1928, vol. i, p. 153.↩
- League of Nations, Report of the Committee for the Amendment of the Covenant of the League of Nations In Order To Bring It Into Harmony With the Pact of Paris (A.8.1930.V.).↩
- Not printed.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1929, vol. i, p. 53.↩