From April 3 to May 3
MULTILATERAL ANTI-WAR TREATY
Secretary Kellogg’s Proposal.-—Following Foreign Minister Briand’s note of March 30 expressing willingness to take up negotiations for a multilateral war renunciation treaty, subject to various reservations, Secretary Kellogg on April 13 submitted to Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Japan a draft treaty, along with all the previous Franco-American correspondence on the subject. In a public statement Secretary Kellogg said this procedure had the full approval of the French Government, though the latter was not committed to approval of the draft proposed. Secretary Kellogg’s treaty reads as follows, with omission of formal heading and conclusion:
[The rulers or executives of the several states, United States, France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan],
Deeply sensible that their high office imposes upon them a solemn duty to promote the welfare of mankind:
Inspired by a common desire not only to perpetuate the peaceful and friendly relations now happily subsisting between their peoples but also to prevent war among any of the nations of the world:
Desirous by formal act to bear unmistakable witness that they condemn war as an instrument of national policy and renounce it in favor of the pacific settlement of international disputes:
Hopeful that, encouraged by their example, all the other nations of the world will join in this humane endeavor and by adhering to the present treaty as soon as it comes into force bring their peoples within the scope of its beneficent provisions, thus uniting the civilized nations of the world in a common renunciation of war as an instrument of their national policy:
Have decided to conclude a treaty and for that purpose have appointed as their respective plenipotentiaries: [Names left blank]
Who having communicated to one another their full powers found in good and due form have agreed upon the following articles:
article 1
The high contracting parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.
ARTICLE 11
The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.
ARTICLE III
The present treaty shall be ratified by the High Contracting Parties named in the preamble in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements, and shall take effect as between them as soon as all their several instruments of ratification shall have been deposited at . . . .
This treaty shall, when it has come into effect as prescribed in the preceding paragraph, remain open as long as may be necessary for adherence by all the other powers of the world. Every instrument evidencing the adherence of a power shall be deposited at . . . . and the treaty shall immediately upon such deposit become effective as between the power thus adhering and the other powers parties hereto.
Germany Approves.—On April 30 the German Government, after having studied also the French draft with its six reservations, sent a reply to Secretary Kellogg expressing complete approval of the American draft, and declaring no qualifications necessary. As a matter of fact the German attitude was never doubtful, for, as stated previously in an article in Germania, “It would be a paradox for a disarmed nation incapable of waging war” to be hostile toward such a proposal.
French Alternative Proposal.—Following the presentation of the American draft treaty, the French Government on April 19 sent to the powers a draft of their own embodying the reservations they deemed necessary. The first two articles of the two drafts were practically identical, following closely the original proposal of Foreign Minister Briand for a Franco- American agreement. The French reservations were six in number, and, in summary, stipulated that the proposed treaty should not:
X. Impair the right of legitimate self- defense.
- Violate the Covenant of the League of Nations.
- Violate the treaties of Locarno.
- Violate certain unspecified treaties guaranteeing neutrality.
- Bind the parties in respect of a state breaking the treaty.
- Come into effect until ratified by all, or substantially all, of the powers of the world.
In the British and other foreign press the opinion was expressed that these reservations pretty effectively “denatured” the Kellogg Treaty, and presented a serious obstacle to any agreement. In a speech before the American Society of International Law on April 28 Secretary Kellogg, however, argued that, while the reservations were needless, they did not present serious difficulties. As to the first reservation, he said the right of self-defense was implicit in every treaty and would not be impaired by the one proposed. As to the second reservation, the League Covenant did not positively require any nation to go to war in its enforcement. As to the third, any violation of the Locarno treaties would also be a violation of the anti-war treaty, provided the nations concerned were parties to both. As to the fourth, France might persuade her allies to join the anti-wqr treaty, in which case a violation of that treaty would automatically leave France and her allies free to act. As to the fifth, it was a well accepted principle of international law that violation of a treaty by any member state would automatically release the other states from their obligations. As to the sixth reservation, it seemed undesirable to wait until nearly every nation great and small had ratified, since acceptance of the treaty by the six major powers would be a practical guaranty against another world war.
These explanations and assurances were favorably received in France, and it was considered possible that the French reservations might perhaps be adequately expressed outside the actual treaty.
British View Favorable.—The attitude of the British Government and press was in general favorable to the Kellogg proposals, seeing in them an opportunity to associate the United States effectively in efforts for world peace, and to put an offender against the League Covenant in the position also of an offender against a treaty signed by the United States.
French See Inconsistency.—The following article by Jules Sauerwein, Foreign editor of the Paris Matin, appearing in the New York Times of April 15, pointed out an apparent inconsistency between the sharp reservations of the American arbitration treaties and the renunciation of war. If the reserved questions are not to be arbitrated, nor yet fought over, how are they to be settled?
What has Mr. Kellogg done in the past few months?
He has concluded or is concluding, with a series of countries new arbitration treaties. These treaties are all on the same model, which is to say, they resemble closely that signed with France on February 6.
It is said in Article II that all differences not settled by diplomatic means or by conciliation are to be submitted to arbitration. But Article III says the provisions of the treaty cannot be invoked with regard to questions which touch national jurisdiction, which involve the interests of third parties, which concern the Monroe Doctrine, and which affect the engagements of France as a member of the League of Nations. Thus, the gravest conflicts arc excepted from the process of arbitration and conciliation.
While engaged in negotiating this sort of treaties Mr. Kellogg, on April 13, delivered to the Great Powers the draft of a treaty excluding war. Article II says, “The High Contracting Parties agree that a settlement or solution of all disputes and conflicts of whatever nature or whatever origin, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.”
Thus, no exception is made in this banning of war. A recourse to arms has been finished with humanity. For all differences must be settled pacifically.
If France or England fortified the West Indian Islands, if Japan installs a naval base on the Mexican coast, if for any reason the free circulation of American ships at sea be interrupted —in these cases, as in all others, the United States promises solemnly, along with the other powers, to exclude any settlement which is not strictly pacific.
This is, indeed, the Geneva formula which might be taken to open a new era for civilization. But, then, the question arises which appears not so much to the mind of the diplomat as to the mind of the man in the street, “if on the one hand you make arbitration treaties excluding the gravest sort of conflicts and if on the other hand you make a universal treaty forbidding you to go to war under any conditions, there are only two explanations to this apparent contradiction—either the proposed anti-war compact cancels all existing arbitration treaties, and therefore all reservations made, and arbitration becomes obligatory and universal, or else you have discovered a means of settling conflict pacifically without resorting either to force or to arbitration.’’
For the hypothesis the first Kellogg treaty lacks an article specifically annulling all preceding international obligations for the maintenance of peace. With regard to the second hypothesis, humanity is feverishly anxious to learn about the new system which the Washington leaders have imagined, and which we have been searching for at Geneva for nearly ten years.
A Record of Irreconcilability.—In connection with the anti-war treaty, it is worth while to reprint a passage which appeared in the April issue of the Proceedings, p. 263, in the article by Lieutenant Commander Rooks “On the Prevention of War.”
There remains only the highly advertised movement to “outlaw” war. This idea has had a curious history. It was first used to strengthen the idea of a league to enforce peace. Makers of aggressive war were to be declared outside the law, and punished for high international crjme. When public opinion became set against covenants to enforce peace, the idea was brought forward with a radically altered meaning. It now became a great moral renunciation. War was to be abolished simply by declaring it illegal; no political or military commitments were in any way involved except an international agreement forever renouncing war. It aimed at a solemn declaration on the part of each nation to renounce war as an instrument of national policy, at the formulation of a new and comprehensive code of international law, and at the creation of another world court to interpret that law. It has since been unalterably opposed to the League of Nations, or, indeed, to any league. In the words of Mr. Walter Lippmann, the phrase is associated with a “perfect record of irreconcilability.”
“We find,” he says, “that the phrase was first employed in order to strengthen a League before there was a League. It was used to defeat the League after there was a League, and to advocate an international court before there was a Court. Now that the Court has been created, it is being used to defeat the Court, and to advocate another court which does not exist.”
UNITED STATES
New Treaty Negotiations.—A new arbitration treaty between the United States and Italy, parallel to the recent treaty with France, was signed on April 19. Negotiations for similar treaties are in progress between the United States and twenty-five other nations, including Great Britain, Germany, Japan and Turkey. Conciliation treaties are under discussion with seventeen nations; commercial treaties calling for “most favored nation” treatment, with fourteen countries; and agreements in regard to fisheries, smuggling, maritime law, etc., with twelve. To take care of this increased activity, a new division has been created in the State Department for drafting and study of such agreements and for collection of a file of existing compacts.
World Court Issue Revived.—World Court discussion was reopened in the Senate on April 9 and again later in connection with the Gillett Resolution asking the President to renew negotiations. Senator Borah said he thought no member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and in fact perhaps no senator, wished to modify Reservation V, and that further negotiations would hence be futile. The Senator added that the President had no power to modify or even construe this reservation. It will be recalled that Reservation V would prevent the Court from rendering an advisory opinion upon any question in which the United States had, or claimed, an interest; and that this was the only one to which Court members took exception in the American application for membership.
In the Senate some objection was made to the flood of letters sent to senators at the suggestion of the American Peace Foundation, which has issued arguments in favor of the Gillett Resolution.
NICARAGUA
American Mines Raided.—Despatches from Nicaragua in late April reported that Sandino forces in northeastern Nicaragua had raided several gold mines in the region and had seized at least five employees, three of them American. These included H. P. Amphlett, a British subject, superintendent of the mine, and his assistant superintendent, J. B. Marshall of New York. It was reported later that Marshall had been killed. A new airplane base was subsequently established at Puerta Cabesas on the Atlantic Coast, to facilitate the operations of marines already stationed there.
Brigadier General McCoy, Supervisor of Nicaragua Elections, left Managua on April 28 for consultation in Washington. Registration dates for the Nicaragua election have been set for September 23, 26, and 30, and October 3 and 7, nearer to the election itself, which is to be held on November 4.
FRANCE
Poincare Victory in Elections.— Parliamentary elections in France ended April 29 in a decided victory for the Cabinet of National Union headed by M. Poincare, which will control a majority of at least 100 in the new Chamber, with still stronger support for the Premier’s financial measures and the peace policies of M. Briand. There will be 612 members in the new Chamber, as compared with 584 in the last. In reality there was no very great shift in party alignments. The chief losses were in the extreme Left, the Communists losing thirteen of their twenty-nine seats in the former Chamber, while the gains went to the Center and Nationalists. There appeared a possibility that M. Herriot and the other Radical Socialist cabinet members might be called upon to resign in view of the strengthening of the parties of the Right.
Because of the complicated French voting system, by which candidates who do not receive a clear majority in a first ballot are voted on a week later, the outcome of the elections, which were held on two successive Sundays, April 22 and 29, was not assured till the second vote. It was reported that chief interest was centered in M. Briand’s anti-war negotiations, rather than in financial measures, and so strong was the support for the former that even Nationalists and militarists had to adopt a pacifist strain.
ITALY
Plans for Permanent Fascist Rule.— According to a dispatch of April 10 by Edwin L. James in the New York Times, Premier Mussolini now finds his grip on Italy so secure that he feels no longer the necessity of keeping his own personality in the spot light, and is laying plans for insuring, beyond his own lifetime, the continuance of Fascist power. “He has replaced loquacious and often inefficient parliamentarism with Mussolinism, and now he seeks to replace the old regime with permanent Fascism.”
To this end the Premier will push through his scheme of parliamentary reform, by which only the 400 candidates named by the Fascist organizations will be presented at the first ballot, and will be declared elected except in the unlikely case that they are defeated by a majority vote. Parliament will then consist of but one party, and will become a mere advisory body to the executive power.
This last the Premier would put in the hands of the Grand Council of the Fascist Party, which he is now seeking to give constitutional status and powers. And to this Council, in the event of his death, would fall the task of maintaining the Italian Government on Fascist lines.
RUSSIA
Theorists Overthrown.—An article by Arthur Ransome in the Baltimore Sun of April 29 throws deserved emphasis on the fact that the recent conflict within the Soviet Party in Russia has resulted in the overthrow of the older professional agitators and theorists and their replacement by a group of practical workers who have risen from the ranks in the ten years of Soviet rule. In the Political Bureau, or inner council of the Central Committee, only two of the eight members are of the educated class. Stalin is the son of a peasant shoemaker, and was expelled after a short time from a seminary where he was put in the hope of making him a priest. In the whole Central Committee only fourteen members are not strictly of the proletariat and peasant class. And all of the half dozen opposition leaders ousted last winter from the Council and the party came from this minority group.
The significance is that the present Soviet rulers are much more interested in the continuance of the present regime in Russia than in the promotion of Communist ideals, and are willing to insure its continuance by a considerable sacrifice of radical principles. Hence the elimination of Trotsky, who believes Communism impossible in one country alone and fears the “degeneration” of Sovietism into a bourgeois government, in fact if not in name.
As Mr. Ransome points out, Soviet foreign policy has in the last year suffered two severe defeats, first in the rupture with England, and second in the complete break with the Chinese Nationalists. These defeats were directly due to the Communist Third Internationale, which pushed its propaganda in disregard of Lenin’s policy of supporting Nationalist movements in “colonial and half-colonial countries” without efforts to make such movements communistic. In the future, Mr. Ransome predicts an effort to “tame the Internationale” or to put more dependence on the strictly Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.
FAR EAST
Nationalist Success in Shantung.— At the close of April it appeared clear that the Nationalist forces had overcome opposition to their advance into Shantung and had captured Tsinan, the capital of the province. The Southern army was reported to be in control of the greater part of Shantung, except in the Tsingtao area, where little fighting was expected. In the attack on Tsinan a bridge was blown up cutting the Tsinan-Tsingtao railway, despite Japanese warning that they intended to keep this line of communication open. Dispatches from Northern China reported the complete demoralization of the army of Chang Tsung- Chang, the Shantung war lord, which has dwindled from a million men a year ago to 50,000 undisciplined followers today.
Japanese Forces in Shantung.—With the resumption of hostilities in Shantung Japanese forces in the province were strengthened by 5,000 or more, troops were sent in to maintain neutral zones in Tsinan, and an effort was made to maintain communications along the Tsinan-Tsingtao railway. These measures brought two sharp protests to Tokio from Nanking, to which the only reply made was that Japanese forces would maintain strict neutrality between North and South and would be used only in protection of Japanese lives and property. Some measures were taken by the Nationalist authorities to prevent clashes with Japanese and other foreigners.
American Missionary Killed.—On April 16 Dr. Walter F. Seymour, superintendent of the American Presbyterian Foreign Missions Hospital of Tsining, in Shantung, was killed, and, as appeared from subsequent reports, by Southern soldiers when he attempted to resist their entrance to the women’s wing of the hospital. Both the Northern and the Southern Governments disavowed responsibility. The Presbyterian Board in New York announced that the killing was an “irresponsible act .... in disobedience to the orders of the Nationalists.”
Conditions in North China.—According to correspondence which appeared in the New York Times of April 10, conditions in Northern China under the rule of Chang Tso-lin were such as to make the capture of Peking by National forces during the summer a strong possibility. The actual situation remains concealed from General Chang himself, who rarely leaves his palace quarters in Peking. Only about one-tenth of the taxes collected have reached the central government, which is on its last legs financially, yet a Tariff Autonomy Commission has been established which is going ahead with plans to put into effect tariff autonomy by the first of next year. This was agreed upon by the International Tariff Conference of 1925, but only on condition of a stable government and abolition of likin, or internal transit dues, which on the contrary have been doubled. Japan especially, as well as other foreign powers, is opposed to increased Chinese revenues which would simply, swell the funds for factional warfare.
Manchurian Railway Problem.— Writing in defense of Japanese policy in Manchuria, in Foreign Affairs for April, the Japanese correspondent K. K. Kawakami speaks as follows of the beneficient results of Japanese railway control:
To Japan, after all, the Chinese question means mainly the Manchurian question, and the core of the Manchurian question is the railway. In the entire railway system of China, the Japanese-owned and Japanese-operated South Manchuria Railway is the only bright section. When a traveler alights from the Chinese train at Mukden and embarks on the Japanese one, he feels as though he had left behind a benighted country full of horrors, and emerged into a new one animated with the joy of life. The railway expends enormous sums for schools, hospitals, sanitation, and modern public works for the benefit of both the Chinese and the Japanese in the railway zone. Yet it yields handsome profit every year. Largely through its enterprise, the foreign trade of Manchuria has grown from a negligible quantity to about $450,000,000 (1926). Before the advent of Japanese enterprise the -Manchurians barely eked out a living by taking in each other's washing. Their principal products, beans and millet, had no market outside of Manchuria and a few Chinese ports. Today the export of beans and bean products alone amounts to about $132,600,000 (1926). It was a Japanese firm, Mitsui and Company, which in 1911 first introduced the Manchurian bean to Europe as a raw material of lubricating and culinary oil. The Central Laboratory of the South Man
churia Railway has found numerous other uses for the bean, and today the once obscure legume has firmly established itself as an article of world merchandise. This phenomenal growth of Manchuria’s agriculture and trade has naturally raised Dairen, the terminal port of the South Manchuria Railway, to a second place among the commercial ports of China. In 1926 Dairen’s foreign trade totaled 332,000,000 haikwan taels, or $250,000,000, exceeded only by Shanghai’s 972,000,000 taels, or $729,000,000.
Shall this condition of peace and prosperity be replaced by chaos and misery such as has made life unbearable in war-ridden China? It is inconceivable that Japan will permit the factional feuds of China to convert South Manchuria, especially the railway zone, into a harrowing scene of destruction and pillage.