permit others to wage war till a formal conference of nations had been held to enquire
into, and, if possible, decide the dispute. It is probably true, at least in theory, that
decisions would be difficult to obtain, for the decisions of such a conference, like all
other international proceedings, would have to be unanimous to be binding. But since the
important thing is to secure delay and open discussion, that is to say, time to enable
public opinion to act and information to instruct it, this is not a serious objection to the
proposal. Indeed, from one point of view, it is an advantage, since it avoids any
interference with national sovereignty except the interposition of a delay in seeking
redress by force of arms. This is the essential thing.... To that extent, and to that extent
only, international coercion would be necessary.”
This speech of Cecil's was approved by The Round Table and accepted as its own
point of view in the issue of December 1918. At the same time, through Smuts, the
Milner Group published another statement of its views. This pamphlet, called The League
of Nations, a Practical Suggestion, was released in December 1918, after having been
read in manuscript and criticized by the inner circle, especially Curtis. This statement
devoted most of its effort to the use of mandates for captured German colonies. For
preserving the peace, it had considerable faith in compulsory arbitration and hoped to
combine this with widespread disarmament.
The Group's own statement on this subject appeared in the December 1918 issue of
The Round Table in an article called "Windows of Freedom," written by Curtis. He
pointed out that British sea-power had twice saved civilization and any proposal that it
should be used in the future only at the request of the League of Nations must be
emphatically rejected. The League would consist of fallible human beings, and England
could never yield her decision to them. He continued: “Her own existence and that of the
world’s freedom are inseparably connected. . . . To yield it without a blow is to yield the
whole citadel in which the forces that make for human freedom are entrenched; to
covenant to yield it is to bargain a betrayal of the world in advance.... [The League must
not be a world government.] If the burden of a world government is placed on it it will
fall with a crash." He pointed out it could be a world government only if it represented
peoples and not states, and if it had the power to tax those peoples. It should simply be an
interstate conference of the world.
“The Peace Conference . . . cannot hope to produce a written constitution for the globe
or a genuine government of mankind. What it can do is establish a permanent annual
conference between foreign ministers themselves, with a permanent secretariat, in which,
as at the Peace Conference itself, all questions at issue between States can be discussed
and, if possible, settled by agreement. Such a conference cannot itself govern the world,
still less those portions of mankind who cannot yet govern themselves. But it can act as a
symbol and organ of the human conscience, however imperfect, to which real
governments of existing states can be made answerable for facts which concern the world
at large."
In another article in the same issue of The Round Table ("Some Principles and
Problems of the Settlement," December 1918), similar ideas were expressed even more
explicitly by Zimmern. He stated that the League of Nations should be called the League
of States, or the Interstate Conference, for sovereign states would be its units, and it
would make not laws but contracts. "The League of Nations, in fact, is far from
invalidating or diminishing national sovereignty, should strengthen and increase it.... The
work before the coming age is n to supersede the existing States but to moralize them....
Membership must be restricted to those states where authority is based upon the consent
of the people over whom it is exercised ... the reign of law.... It can reasonably be
demanded that no States should be admitted which do not make such a consummation
one of the deliberate aims of their policy." Under this idea, The Round Table excluded by
name from the new League, Liberia, Mexico, "and above all Russia." "The League," it
continued, "will not simply be a League of States, it will be a League of
Commonwealths." As its hopes in the League dwindled, The Round Table became less
exclusive, and, in June 1919, it declared, "without Germany or Russia the League of
Nations will be dangerously incomplete. "
In the March 1919 issue, The Round Table described in detail the kind of League it
wanted—"a common clearing house for noncontentious business." Its whole basis was to
be "public opinion," and its organization was to be that of "an assembly point of
bureaucrats of various countries" about an international secretariat and various
organizations like the International Postal Union or the International Institute of
Agriculture.
“Every great department of government in each country whose activities touch those
of similar departments in other countries should have its recognized delegates on a
permanent international commission charged with the study of the sphere of international
relations in question and with the duty of making recommendations to their various
Governments. . . . Across the street, as it were, from these permanent Bureaux, at the
capital of the League, there should be another central permanent Bureau ... an
International secretariat.... They must not be national ambassadors, but civil servants
under the sole direction of a non-national chancellor; and the aim of the whole
organization . . . must be to evolve a practical international sense, a sense of common
service.”
This plan regarded the Council of the League as the successor of the Supreme War
Council, made up of premiers and foreign ministers, and the instrument for dealing with
political questions in a purely consultative way. Accordingly, the Council would consist
only of the Great Powers.
These plans for the Covenant of the League of Nations were rudely shattered at the
Peace Conference when the French demanded that the new organization be a "Super-
state" with its own army and powers of action. The British were horrified, but with the
help of the Americans were able to shelve this suggestion. However, to satisfy the
demand from their own delegations as well as the French, they spread a camouflage of
sham world government over the structure they had planned. This was done by Cecil
Hurst. Hurst visited David Hunter Miller, the American legal expert, one night and
persuaded him to replace the vital clauses 10 to 16 with drafts drawn up by Hurst. These
drafts were deliberately drawn with loopholes so that no aggressor need ever be driven to
the point where sanctions would have to be applied. This was done by presenting
alternative paths of action leading toward sanctions, some of them leading to economic
sanctions, but one path, which could be freely chosen by the aggressor, always available,
leading to a loophole where no collective action would be possible. The whole procedure
was concealed beneath a veil of legalistic terminology so that the Covenant could be
presented to the public as a watertight document, but Britain could always escape from