THE LEAGUE COVENANT

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 23 August 1935, Page 8

THE LEAGUE COVENANT

PROCEDURE FOR PEACE, THE STEPS "THAT REMAIN. The procedure followed so far under the machinery' of the League of Nations in efforts to arrive at a peaceful settlement of the Italo-Abyssinian dispute practically exhausts the provisions of Article 15 of the Covenant, relating to disputes which are not. submitted to arbitration. Under that Article, it is still open for the League Council to refer the dispute to the Assembly, which is due to meet at Geneva, for its yearly meeting, on “the Monday previous to September 10.”

. The Covenant lays down in Article 16 (“Sanctions” of the League) that should any member of the League resort to war in disregard of its covenants, it shall ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of wax against all the other members of the League, which are thereupon obliged immediately to subject it to the severance of all trade or financial relations, the prohibition of all intercourse between their nationals and the nationals of the covenant-breaking State, and the prevention of all financial, commercial, or personal intercourse between the nationals of tlio covenant-breaking State and the nationals of any other State, whether a member of the League or not.

It is prescribed as the duty of the Council in such a ease to recommend to the several Governments concerned what .effective military, naval or air force the members of the League shall severally contribute to the armed forces to be used to protect the covenants of the League. The members of the League agreed under the Covenant mutually to support one another in the financial and economic measures taken under this Article, in order to minimise the loss and inconvenience resulting from the measures outlined above, and mutually to support one another in resisting any special measures aimed at one of their number bv the covenant-breaking State, and to take the necessary steps to afford passage through their territory to the forces of any of the members of the League which are co-operating to protect the covenants of the League. Any member of the League which violates any covenant of the League may be declared to he no longer a member by a vote of the Council concurred in" by the representatives of all the other members of the League represented on the Council.