One of the principal tests to be applied to any federal constitution in order to discover its true character relates to the method of amendment. The Covenant, being a treaty agreement, may only be altered effectively by unanimous consent. It is true that amendments may be adopted by the consent of the Powers whose representatives at the time compose the Council, acting together with a majority of the states possessing members in the Assembly,' but it is also provided that dissenting members shall not be bound by such changes although they shall, if they persist in dissenting from the changes, lose membership in the League.2 This gives to the Great Powers and the few Powers of Second Rank represented on the Council a powerful veto over all amendments. The smaller powers represented in the Assembly may be compelled to accept amendments in many cases in spite of their national wishes or be content to suffer exclusion from the League. Taking the amendment of the Covenant or constitution of the League as the test of the location of sovereignty or control within the League, it is clear enough that that control lies in the Council or, rather, in the Powers represented in the Council, limited by their ability to secure the concurrence of enough smaller states to control a majority in the Assembly, and by the power of a single member to escape from the terms of an amendment and from the League itself by persistent defiance of the former.

Such being the Covenant and the League as projected in 1919, a few general conclusions at once emerge. The system created by the Covenant is comprehensive and symmetrical, complete and adequate in range and scope. The historical institutions of international government-diplomacy, treaty-negotiation, and arbitration, including good offices and mediation-are gathered together and carried forward into the future in close coördination one with 1 Covenant, Art. XXVI, Par. 1. 'Same, Par. 2.

another and with a new system of conferences and congresses more ample and more comprehensive than anything in existence before. The League is provided with characteristic constituent, legislative, administrative, and judicial organs. It is capable of expansion, and its framework is not unsuited to the development of all varieties of committees and commissions acting under the Secretariat, the Council, and the Assembly.

Admirable in organic structure, the League is, however, in a dubious position as far as its membership and powers are concerned. Its membership still shows the effect of the war and reveals the League as largely a league of victors for perpetuating a position of diplomatic dominance won in battle, rather than a general concert of power for common benefits. So long as this condition of affairs continues, as it must until the legacies of the war are liquidated, its outlook and activities must necessarily be partial, if not partisan. This phenomenon is simply one angle of the manner in which war tends to wreck the nascent fabric of international organization. When the problems of the war are settled the League may turn to other things. It is to be hoped that the rather perplexing definition and allotment of powers in the Covenant may then be cleared up. Is the Assembly merely a debating society? To what extent is the Council in control? Is there no more power of compulsion vested in the League than such as rests on political and moral influence? Can the nations be brought to face the conditions of the world more squarely and courageously? Such are the problems left open by the Covenant. The Covenant was devised in a few weeks in 1919. It may be revised through decades of international constitutional history.

PART VIII

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION IN 1920-1921

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE LEAGUE OF
NATIONS AND THE RESUMPTION OF
INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT

THE

HE Treaty of Versailles having been ratified in the closing months of 1919 by a sufficient number of the signatory parties to render it effective, an exchange of ratifications took place in Paris on 10 January, 1920. Three days later the first meeting of the Council of the League was summoned by President Wilson, acting under Article V of the Covenant, and on 16 January the League was formally established by a meeting of the Council in Paris.1

The first meeting of the Council had been preceded by a considerable amount of work by an Organization Committee and the Secretary-General.

The Organization Committee had been created by a resolution adopted by the Peace Conference on 28 April, 1919. Starting its work on 5 May the Committee continued to function until the formal establishment of the League, its task being to supervise the organization of the Secretariat and prepare for the meeting of the Council.

The Secretary-General had been named in an appendix to the text of the Covenant. He immediately began to act in accordance with the intentions of the Covenant, although that pact was not yet in force. Temporary offices were established in London. Certain undersecretaries were chosen. The collection of books and papers for a library for the Secretariat was begun. In these actions the Organization 1Official Journal, I, No. 1, 12, 17, 18. On the early history of the League see literature cited, below, in Appendix B, § 28.