3. The Council may include as part of the expenses of the Secretariat the expenses of any bureau or commission which is placed under the direction of the League.
The Members of the League agree to encourage and promote the establishment and co-operation of duly authorized voluntary national Red Cross organizations having as purposes the improve ment of health, the prevention of disease and the mitigation of suffering throughout the world.
I. Amendments to this Covenant will take effect when ratified by the Members of the League whose Representatives compose the Council and by a majority of the Members of the League whose Representatives compose the Assembly.
The first of the determining political conditions is that the proc ess of settling the terms of peace, of resolving the immediate problems left by the World War, was only begun and not ended by the treaties of peace signed in 1919. For years afterwards peace was still being negotiated in every capital in Europe. One of the treaties, indeed, the Treaty of Sevres, was never ratified. Renewed war between Greece and Turkey, rather the continua tion, after an interval, of one section of the World War than the outbreak of a new one, was to precede the new Treaty of Lau sanne of 1923. But even those treaties which were duly ratified left unsettled questions of the first political importance, in the forefront "reparation" and in the second rank a host of secondary, but still difficult and important, problems, which will require pro longed consideration before a satisfactory settlement can be made.
In the second place, the scope of the League's work has been limited by the fact that, while in essence a world organisation, it has not in the first eight years of its existence received the adhesion of all countries.
These conditions derive additional importance from the funda mental character of the League as an organisation. The League is not a super-State with either the right or the authority to impose its will on the sovereign States which compose it. It is essentially an organ for securing agreement between them, and its power of action is at any time limited by the extent of possible agreement.
Except in special cases, of which the most important is that members undertake not to go to war to enforce a claim rejected by all the members on the Council except the disputants them selves, signature of the Covenant does not involve an obligation on any State to accept a decision of the League without its own consent.
For the great bulk of its work, therefore, the League requires unanimity. It can persuade, it can elicit a collective world opinion, both private and official, which it may use to aid its persuasion, but, except before the imminent threat of war, it cannot compel; and even in this case unanimity of the non-disputant members of the Council is required. It follows, therefore, that the power of the League varies with the pdlicies and characters of the countries which compose it and of their relations between each other. How far this is from involving impotence, how great is the difference between the policy a country would pursue if left alone from that 'The Second Assembly, Oct. 3, 1921, proposed that Article 26 should be amended as follows:— "Amendments to the present Covenant the text of which shall have been voted by the Assembly on a three-fourths majority, in which there shall be included the votes of all the Members of the Council represented at the meeting, will take effect when ratified by the Members of the League, whose Representatives composed the Council when the vote was taken and by the majority of those whose Repre sentatives form the Assembly.