No law except the Sword, unsheathed and uncontrolled!
—Rudyard Kipling.
Great primeval monsters, each his own judge of right and wrong, and all ready to fight separately or in combination the moment there was anything to be gained by fighting—such were the Great Powers not long ago. That this shall be so no longer men have now met in Geneva. Last week they worked.
Fundamental are these facts:
1) So-called "International Law," contrary to popular belief, does not necessarily bind a sovereign state.
2) The League of Nations is today no bar to war, as Japan is proving daily.
3) Neither the World Court nor the Hague Court is endowed with an authority over sovereign states in any way remotely comparable to what men mean when they say "a court."
Therefore last week the men in Geneva, the statesmen of 57 nations, had to build almost anew, or fail and leave their Conference a mockery. Up stood a go-getter, before the Conference was quite ready to hear him, and dynamically proposed to build anew. Said he in effect: the Conference had better scrap that confused wad of paper over which European statesmen have fought and contradicted each other for years, the so-called League of Nations Draft Convention for the Disarmament Conference. Instead, the go-getter, M. Andre Tardieu, proposed his plan, the plan of France.
"All the World's!" Not new, M. Tardieu merely gave a semblance of creation to the old, calm, logical French argument that only a real International Law, only a real League of Nations and only a real World Court can make sovereign states toe the line of International Decency.
Broadly M. Tardieu asked the Conference "to make a definite choice between a League of Nations possessing executive authority and a League of Nations paralyzed by the intransigencies of national sovereignty."
Specifically M. Tardieu offered, subject to similar offers and approval all round, to place at the disposal of the League of Nations upon demand:
1) All the world's long-range artillery.
2} All the world's warships exceeding 10,000 tons each or armed with guns of a calibre above 8 in.
3) All the world's large submarines.
4) All the world's civil airplanes capable of military use, phis an air armada of heavy bombers created exclusively for the League.
5) An International Police Force (ultimate name unimportant} to swing the above nightsticks and crack them over the heads of sovereign states which do not toe the mark of International Decency.