upon the Secretary General to publish every document of that sort at the earliest possible time.

I suppose most persons who have not been conversant with the business of foreign affairs do not realize how many hundreds of these agreements are made in a single year, and how difficult it might be to publish the more unimportant of them immediately, how uninteresting it would be to most of the world to publish them immediately, but even they must be published just as soon as it is possible for the Secretary General to publish them.

Then there is a feature about this covenant which, to my mind, is one of the greatest and most satisfactory advances that has been made. We are done with annexations of helpless peoples, meant in some instances by some powers to be used merely for exploitation. We recognize in the most solemn manner that the helpless and undeveloped peoples of the world, being in that condition, put an obligation upon us to look after their interests primarily before we use them for our interests, and that in all cases of this sort hereafter it shall be the duty of the League to see that the nations who are assigned as the tutors and advisers and directors of these peoples shall look to their interests and their development before they look to the interests and desires of the mandatory nation itself.

There has been no greater advance than this, gentlemen. If you look back upon the history of the world you will see how helpless peoples have too often been a prey to powers that had no conscience in the matter. It has been one of the many distressing revelations of recent years that the great power which has just been, happily, defeated, put intolerable burdens and injustices upon the helpless people of some of the colonies which it annexed to itself, that its interest was rather their extermination than their development, that the desire was to possess their land for European purposes and not to enjoy their confidence in order that mankind might be lifted in these places to the next higher level.

Now, the world, expressing its conscience in law, says there is an end of that, that our consciences shall be settled to this thing. States will be picked out which have already shown that they can exercise a conscience in this matter, and under

their tutelage the helpless peoples of the world will come into a new light and into a new hope.

So I think I can say of this document that it is at one and the same time a practical document and a human document. There is a pulse of sympathy in it. There is a compulsion of conscience throughout it. It is practical, and yet it is intended to purify, to rectify, to elevate. And I want to say that so far as my observation instructs me, this is in one sense a belated document. I believe that the conscience of the world has long been prepared to express itself in some such way. We are not just now discovering our sympathy for these people and our interest in them. We are simply expressing it, for it has long been felt, and in the administration of the affairs of more than one of the great States represented here so far as I know, all of the great States that are represented here-that humane impulse has already expressed itself in their dealings with their colonies, whose peoples were yet at a low stage of civilization.

We have had many instances of colonies lifted into the sphere of complete self-government. This is not the discovery of a principle. It is the universal application of a principle. It is the agreement of the great nations which have tried to live by these standards in their separate administrations, to unite in seeing that their common force and their common thought and intelligence are lent to this great and humane enterprise. I think it is an occasion, therefore, for the most profound satisfaction that this humane decision should have been reached in a matter for which the world has long been waiting and until a very recent period thought that it was still too early to hope. Many terrible things have come out of this war, gentlemen, but some very beautiful things have come out of it. Wrong has been defeated, but the rest of the world has been more conscious than it ever was before of the majority of right. People that were suspicious of one another can now live as friends and comrades in a single family, and desire to do so. The miasma of distrust, of intrigue, is cleared away. Men are looking eye to eye and saying: "We are brothers and have a common purpose. We did not realize it before, but now we do realize it, and this is our covenant of friendship."

M. LÉON BOURGEOIS

I RISE to express the deep satisfaction of all, and of France more than any other country, because she is among the countries who have most suffered, to see the unity of our wills and of our hearts in a passionate adhesion to the principles of the League of Nations. That act of faith we shall do in a spirit of cordiality and good will that has been that of the committee. Under the eminent chairmanship of President Wilson the committee has worked with all their hearts to attain this great object.

Lord Robert Cecil has said we now present to the conference and to the world the result of our work, but we do not present it as something that is final, but only as the result of an honest effort to be discussed and to be examined not only by this conference but the public opinion of the world.

We are unanimous in our opinion that this scheme must be presented to the world, and it resulted from our deliberation. We must preserve the character of unanimity which its note has given it. We still retain our rights when further discussions take place to state more definitely our views on some details.

Signor Orlando has said how difficult it seemed at the beginning to conciliate two apparently contradictory principles-that of the sovereignty of nations and that of the limitations that nations must accept in order to secure the reign of right and justice. That conciliation has taken place without effort, and we have demonstrated movement, as Signor Orlando said, by walking.

We rise to prevent the renewal of war like that which we have just seen; we rise at the appeal of all those who have fallen to spare their offspring the renewal of such an ordeal. We are persuaded that no war in the future can be limited to a small

area.

The interdependence of the different parts and different interests of the world has become such that no conflict can be limited. It is that the whole world may keep itself from danger that we to-day have ordained that right and justice must be the basis of settlement in all our conferences. In the view of just

people there are no small and no great States. All are and all will be equal before the principle of international justice, and in the tribunal that will give the decisions the judges will sit, not as the representatives of one particular nation, but as the representatives of international right.

This is a principle to which we are particularly attached. All the States, in consenting to submit to international justice, take at the same time a definite pledge to guarantee to each other the integrity of their territories as established by the settlement of the present peace treaty, and also to guarantee their political independence against future aggression. This is the object of our scheme. I hope the means which are suggested by it will allow us to attain our object.

We have established a certain number of judicial principles and international organizations binding the States together, binding them to a common work, and binding them to the truce without which their common development would be impossible. These organizations, the creation of which is provided for in the last articles of the covenant, are similar to some which have existed already, but which were scattered through various parts of the world and which had never been brought together to form part of the common body of humanity. The foundation is now laid, and we are certain that the organizations will be multiplied and will help humanity more and more to attain its common aims.

We have been unanimous in proclaiming these principles, and we have felt the force of these principles so much that we have no doubt that a strong light will penetrate even into the darkest ports, that the light radiating from those principles will find its way in lands that seem to be the least open to it.

But it is not enough to proclaim such great principles. We must organize a system of guaranty and a system of action, both judicial and practical. The plan laid down is a clear and simple one. There is a council where all the States are represented equally, each having only one vote, and there is an Executive Committee which is constituted on a different principle. But even in this case, where it has been found necessary for purposes of action to give five votes to the larger

Powers, the principle of equality has been secured by giving as much as four votes to the smaller States.

Respect for the decision given by that body will be assured by definite rules, the violation of which shall be considered as an act of war against all the contracting States. If one State (it may be the smallest and most remote of all the States) is attacked without justification, then the whole of the League of Nations is being attacked, and will resist.

But we must go further. In order to secure the execution of international sentences there must be a limitation of armaments. This has been the wish of the world for a great many years. What was formerly so difficult has to-day become possible. Our victory has made it possible, because it has enabled us to disarm the barbaric force that was in the way of such an improvement.

That limitation must be such that no State can be capable of prevailing against the will of the law of nations, but at the same time each State should be strong enough to contribute to the force that will enable the League of Nations to impose its will. There has been unanimity upon all these points.

There are one or two points upon which I wish particularly to insist, because they are connected with dangers that may be of special moment to some of us, dangers that may arise not equal for all.

There are special dangers for countries like France, Belgium, Serbia, and the new States that are in the stage of formation in Central Europe. It is necessary to give them special guaranties, and this has been recognized by the committee, when it states that special account should be taken of the geographical situation of, and the mode of application to, each State in the scale of armaments. Where the frontiers are more exposed it must be possible to have stronger systems of defense, and possibly also greater armaments.

This is all right, but there is no doubt that it will put on the shoulders of the nations who happen to be in that difficult position a special burden. It will hamper them in the peaceful competition that is the life of the world.

And here again two practical questions must be put. To give all nations necessary security, the principle of the limitation of