RENUNCIATION OF WAR The most important general treaty concluded since that of Ver sailles is the Pact Of Paris or "Kellogg Pact," a multilateral treaty for the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy (see OUTLAWRY OF WAR), signed at Paris by the representatives of many nations on Aug. 27, 1928, and ratified by the American Senate on Jan. 15, 1929. Under this instrument the signatory Powers renounce war "as an instrument of policy" and "con demn" it as a means for settling international differences.
Whatever the moral force of such a declaration of principle may have, its practical value must not be exaggerated. It does not --as Professor Shotwell has pointed out—involve the "outlawry" of war, since it provides no sanctions.• The sovereign "right" to make war is not renounced, and the right to conduct a war of defence is safeguarded, which—in the absence of any definition of "aggression"—leaves a loophole for the evasion of the obligations imposed by the treaty. Nor can the claim be admitted that the treaty introduces a new principle into international law. Essen tially, the Pact is much the same thing as the Act of the Holy Alliance in 1815 or the Declaration of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, namely, a solemn undertaking by the Powers to ensure peace. The only difference is that the renunciation of war as an instrument of policy, which was implicit in the earlier acts, is explicit in the Pact.
It must be remembered, too, that though the sovereign State was regarded by the old jurists (e.g., Vattel) as the sole judge of
its own actions, it did not follow that wars of mere aggression were looked upon as legitimate. This is made clear by the French jurist Jean Domat in his Les lois civiles (1689), where he distin guishes between wars which are, so to speak, ordeals by battle waged by the sovereigns of two nations who, "being independent of one another and having no judges in common, do justice for themselves by force of arms, when they cannot or will not have mediators to make peace between them," and wars "which are the outcome of pure violence and of the aggressions of princes or states upon their neighbours." That this distinction was recognized by sovereigns as well has been pointed out above (Inviolability of Treaties). Even Napo leon, the arch-aggressor, declared solemnly, in the Memoirs dic tated at St. Helena, that all his wars were defensive. It may be suggested, then, that the importance of the Pact of Paris lies less in the enunciation of a principle than in the practical considera tions which inspired it ; namely, that in modern conditions war is too dangerous to use as an instrument of policy and too expensive and uncertain to employ as a method of international litigation.
See J. T. Shotwell, War as an Instrument of National Policy (New York and London, 1929).