Dec.
45
"The
President of the German Reich" —
and the other states associated . . .
THE
PRESIDENT: Shall we find it among the documents?
SIR HARTLEY SHAWCROSS: It will be put
in. I don't think you have it at the moment.
"The
President of the German Reich . . .
deeply sensitive of their solemn duty to
promote the welfare of mankind;
persuaded that the time has come when a
frank renunciation of war as an
instrument of international policy
should be made to the end that the
peaceful and friendly relations now
existing between their peoples may be
perpetuated; convinced that all changes
in their relations with one another
should be sought only by pacific means
and be the result of a peaceful and
orderly progress, and that any signatory
power which shall hereafter seek to
promote its national interests by resort
to war, should be denied the benefits
furnished by this Treaty; 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 civilized nations of the
world in a common renunciation of war as
an instrument of their national policy.
. .
"Then,
Article I:
"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."
And
Article II:
"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."
In that treaty, that General Treaty for the
Renunciation of War, practically the whole
civilized world abolished war as a legally
permissible means of enforcing the law or of
changing it. The right of war was no longer of
the essence of sovereignty. Whatever the
position may have been at the time of the Hague
Convention, whatever the position may have been
in 1914, whatever it may have been in 1918 —
and it is not necessary to discuss it — no
international lawyer of repute, no responsible
statesman, no soldier concerned with the legal
use of armed forces, no economist or
industrialist concerned in his country's war
economy could doubt that with the