The four Arbitration Conventions between Germany, Belgium, France, Poland and Czechoslovakia stipulate that all points of dis pute between them, before being submitted to arbitrators or to the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague, may be taken before a permanent Commission to be constituted in the three months following the coming into force of the treaty.
It is, moreover, specified that these treaties make no attack on the rights and obligations resulting from the Treaty of Ver sailles, and do not impose any obligation whatsoever, either on British India, or on the dominions of the British empire.
On Dec. 14, 1925, Sir Austen Chamberlain and M. Paul Boncour laid on the table of the Council of the League of Nations, the Treaties of Locarno. The secretary of State for foreign affairs recalled the fact that the League of Nations had often remarked with what favour it would see the achievement of the efforts of certain nations to conclude Arbitration and Security Conventions, and that the Locarno Agreements were but the realization of this wish. Paul-Boncour read a telegram from Briand which stated that these conventions established new relations between their signatories, founded upon the respect of treaties and upon the rights of each.
Thus Germany re-entered the European Concert, as a party to a pacific agreement. Was a new order of things arising in Europe? If so, in order to make it lasting all the signatories to this agree ment must show persevering good-will and fidelity to what has since been called "the Locarno spirit." Preparatory Commission for Disarmament Conference.— The League of Nations, however, had been informed since Sept. 1925 of the negotiations which were to end at Locarno in the month of October following. Acting on the suggestion of the Span ish Delegate, Senor Quinones de Leon, it had associated itself with them in anticipation, expressing the wish that these agree ments might apply to the whole world. The Council carried out the resolution of the Assembly by constituting in Dec. 1925, a pre paratory commission for a Disarmament Conference. At the same time, it drew up a list of the questions submitted to this commission, and instituted the preparation of a draft international agreement for the control of private manufacture of arms and munitions of war.
This preparatory commission has become an essential organ of the activity of the Council since it foreshadows the assembling of a Disarmament Conference in the relatively near future. It includes even representatives of States which are not members of the League of Nations, such as the United States and the Union of Soviet Republics. It has created two sub-committees, the one military, the other economic, and it assembled for the first time under the presidency of M. Loudon, the Netherlands dele gate.
From the very beginning it encountered serious difficulties : sufficient to detail a few of the questions it had to solve in order to realize where it was. To begin with, it put the question, what is meant by the expression "armaments"?' How is a limit to be fixed, and how may they be compared as between one country and another? Are some armaments offensive, others defensive? Can civil aviation be distinguished from military aviation? How are we to calculate the degree of security of a country in case of attack, so as to apply Article i6 of the Covenant, which calls upon the members of the League of Nations to give it their material support? This last question led the United States delegate to retire. He did not wish to take part in a debate of interest only to the members of the League of Nations.
On the other hand, the British delegates raised some objections, for they feared that Article 16 of the Covenant might lead back to solutions similar to those of the Protocol which Sir Austen Chamberlain had rejected in 1925. Finally, the German dele gates also made certain reservations which they supported by diplomatic overtures in London and Paris; they wished to be heard by the Council, of which Germany was not yet a member. It must be allowed that the Convention which Germany had recently concluded with Soviet Russia, in virtue of which these two Powers had promised each other reciprocal neutrality, placed her in a peculiar situation from the point of view of the obligation of mutual assistance which the Covenant of the League of Nations imposes upon all its members.