According to its constitution, the League of Nations may, in case of war or the menace of war (Clause 11), convoke its members, and take all the measures required to safeguard the peace of the nations.  All the adhering States have recognized their obligation to submit all controversies to arbitration, and that in any case they have no right to resort to war before the expiration of a term of three months after the verdict of the arbiters or the report of the Council (Clause 12).  Any member of the League of Nations resorting to war contrary to the undertakings of the treaty which constitutes the League is, ipso facto, considered as if he had committed an act of war against all the other members of the League (Clause 19).

But more important still is the fact that the Assembly of the League of Nations may invite its members to proceed to a fresh examination of treaties that become inapplicable as well as of international situations whose prolongation might imperil the peace of the world (Clause 19).

We may therefore revise the present treaties without violence and without destroying them.

What requires to be modified there is no necessity to say, inasmuch as all the matter of this book supplies the evidence and the proof.  What is certain is that in Europe and America, except for an intransigent movement running strong in France, everyone is convinced of the necessity of revision.

It will be well that this revision should take place through the operations of the League of Nations after the representatives of all the States, conquerors, conquered and neutrals, have come to form part of it.

But in the constitution of the League of Nations there are two clauses which form its fundamental weakness, sections desired by France, whose gravity escaped Wilson.

Clause 5 declares that, save and excepting contrary dispositions, the decisions of the Assembly or of the Council are to be by the unanimous consent of the members represented at the meetings.  It is difficult to imagine anything more absurd.  If the modification of a territorial situation is being discussed, all the nations must agree as to the solution, including the interested nation.  The League of Nations is convinced that the Danzig corridor is an absurdity, but if France is not of the same opinion no modification can be made.  Without a change of this clause, every honest attempt at revision must necessarily break down.

Clause 10, by which the members of the League of Nations pledge themselves to respect and preserve from external attacks the territorial integrity and the existing political independence of all the members of the League, must also be altered.  This clause, which is profoundly immoral, consecrates and perpetuates the mistakes and faults of the treaties.  No honest country can guarantee the territorial integrity of the States now existing after the monstrous parcelling out of entire groups of Germans and Magyars to other nations,