Nazi Conspiracy & Aggression So first let this be said. Whilst it may be true that there
is no body of international rules amounting to law in the
Austinian sense of a rule imposed by a sovereign upon a
subject obliged to obey it under some definite sanction, yet
for fifty years or more the people of the world, striving
perhaps after that ideal of which the poet speaks:
When the War Drums throb no longer
have sought to create an operative system of rules based on
the consent of nations to stabilize international relations,
to avoid war taking place at all and to mitigate the results
of such wars as took place. The first such treaty was of
course the Hague Convention of 1899 for the Pacific
Settlement of International Disputes. This was, indeed, of
little more than predatory effect and we attach no weight to
it for the purpose of this case, but it did establish
agreement that in the event of serious disputes arising
between the signatory powers, they would so far as possible
submit to mediation. That Convention was followed in 1907 by
another Convention reaffirming and slightly strengthening
what had previously been agreed. These early conventions
fell indeed very far short of outlawing war or of creating
any binding obligation to arbitrate. I shall certainly not
ask you to say any crime was committed by disregarding them.
But at least they established that the contracting powers
accepted the general principle that if at all possible war
should be resorted to only if mediation failed.
Although these Conventions are mentioned in the Indictment I
do not rely on them save to show the historical development
of the law. It is unnecessary, therefore, to argue about
their effect,
[Page 597]
for their place has been taken by more effective
instruments. They were the first steps.
There were, of course, other individual agreements between
particular States which sought to preserve the neutrality of
individual countries as, for instance, that of Belgium, but
those agreements were, in the absence of any real will to
comply with them, entirely inadequate to prevent the first
World War in 1914.
Shocked by the occurrence of that catastrophe the Nations of
Europe, not excluding Germany, and of other parts of the
World came to the conclusion that in the interests of all
alike a permanent organization of the Nations should be
established to maintain the peace. And so the Treaty of
Versailles was prefaced by the Covenant of the League of
Nations.
I say nothing at this moment of the general merits of the
various provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. They have
been criticized, some of them perhaps justly, and they were
made the subject of much warlike propaganda in Germany. But
it is unnecessary to enquire into the merits of the matter,
for however unjust one might for this purpose assume the
Treaty to be, it contained no kind of excuse for the waging
of war to secure an alteration in its terms. For not only
was it a settlement by agreement of all the difficult
territorial questions which had been left outstanding by the
war itself but it established the League of Nations which,
if it had been loyally supported, could so well have
resolved those international differences which might
otherwise have led, as they did lead, to war. It set up in
the Council of the League, in the Assembly and in the
Permanent Court of International Justice, a machine not only
for the peaceful settlement of international disputes but
also for the ventilation of all international questions
frank and open discussion. At the time the hopes of the
world stood high. Millions of men in all countries --
perhaps even in Germany -- had laid down their lives in what
they believed and hoped to be a war to end war. Germany
herself entered the League and was given a permanent seat on
the Council, on which, as in the Assembly, German
Governments which preceded that of the Defendant Von Papen
in 1932 played their full part. In the years from 1919 to
1932 despite some minor incidents in the heated atmosphere
which followed the end of the war, the peaceful operation of
the League continued. Nor was it only the operation of the
League which gave good ground for hope that at long last the
rule of-law would replace that of anarchy in the
international field.
The Statesmen of the world deliberately set out to make wars
of aggression an international Crime. These are no new
terms,
[Page 598]
invented by the Victors to embody in this Charter. They have
figured prominently in numerous treaties, in governmental
pronouncements and in declarations of Statesmen in the
period preceding the Second World War. In treaties concluded
between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and other
States -- such as Persia (1 October 1927), France (2 May
1935), China (21 August 1937) the Contracting Parties
undertook to refrain from any act of aggression whatsoever
against the other Party. In 1933 the Soviet Union became a
party to a large number of treaties containing a detailed
definition of aggression.
"The same definition appeared in
the same year in the authoritative Report of the Committee
on Questions of Security set up in connection with the
Conference for the Reduction and the Limitation of
Armaments. But States went beyond commitments to refrain
from wars of aggression and to assist States victims of
aggression. They condemned wars of aggression. Thus in the
AntiWar Treaty of Non-Aggression and Conciliation of 10
October 1933, a number of American States subsequently
joined by practically all the States of the American
Continent and a number of European countries -- the
Contracting Parties solemnly declared that "they condemned
wars of aggression in their mutual relations or in those of
other States." That Treaty was fully incorporated into the
Buenos Aires Convention of December 1936 signed and ratified
by a large number of American countries, including the
United States of America. Previously, in February 1928, the
Sixth Pan-American Conference adopted a Resolution declaring
that as "war of aggression- constitutes a crime against the
human species *** all aggression is illicit and as such is
declared prohibited." In September 1927 the Assembly of the
League of Nations adopted a resolution affirming the
conviction that "a war of aggression can never serve as a
means of settling international disputes and is, in
consequence, an international crime" and declaring that "all
wars of aggression are, and shall always be, prohibited."
The first Article of the Draft Treaty for Mutual Assistance
of 1923 reads: "The High Contracting Parties, affirming that
aggressive war is an international crime, undertake the
solemn engagement not to make themselves guilty of this
crime against any other nation." In the Preamble to the
Geneva Protocol of 1924 it was stated that "offensive
warfare constitutes an infraction of solidarity and an
international crime." These instruments remained unratified,
for various reasons, but they are not without significance
or instruction.
These repeated condemnations of wars of aggression testified
to the fact that, with the establishment of the League of
Nations
[Page 599]
and with the legal developments which followed it, the place
of war in International Law had undergone a profound change.
War was ceasing to be the unrestricted prerogative of
sovereign States. The Covenant of the League did not totally
abolish the right of war. It left certain gaps which
probably were larger in theory than in practice. In effect
it surrounded the right of war by procedural and substantive
checks and delays which, if the Covenant had been observed,
would have amounted to an elimination of war not only
between Members of the League, but also, by virtue of
certain provisions of the Covenant, in the relations of non-
Members. Thus the Covenant restored the position as it
existed at the dawn of International Law, at the time when
Grotius was laying the foundations of the modern law of
nations and established the distinction, accompanied by
profound legal consequences in the sphere of neutrality,
between just and unjust wars.
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Volume
I Chapter IX
Opening Address for the United Kingdom
(Part 2 of 17)
And the Battle Flags are furled,
In the Parliament of Man,
The Federation of the World