4
Dec. 45
accepted
as having taken place as a result of the Pact of
Parts in international law:
"But
the whole situation. . . rests, and
international law on the subject has
been entirely built up, on the
assumption that there is nothing
illegitimate in the use of war as an
instrument of national policy, and, as a
necessary corollary, that the position
and rights of neutrals are entirely
independent of the circumstances of any
war which may be in progress. Before the
acceptance of the Covenant, the basis of
the law of neutrality was that the
rights and obligations of neutrals were
identical as regards both belligerents,
and were entirely independent of the
rights and wrongs of the dispute which
had led to the war, or the respective
position of the belligerents at the bar
of world opinion."
Then the Government went on:
"Now
it is precisely this assumption which is
no longer valid as regards states which
are members of the League of Nations and
parties to the Peace Pact The effect of
those instruments, taken together, is to
deprive nations of the right to employ
war as an instrument of national policy,
and to forbid the states which have
signed them to give aid or comfort to an
offender."
This
was being said in 1939, when there was no war
upon the horizon. "As
between such states, there has been in
consequence a fundamental change in the
whole question of belligerent and
neutral rights. The whole policy of His
Majesty's present Government (and, it
would appear, of any alternative
government) is based upon a
determination to comply with their
obligations under the Covenant of the
League and the Peace Pact. This being
so, the situation which we have to
envisage in the event of a war in which
we were engaged is not one in which the
rights and duties of belligerents and
neutrals will depend upon the old rules
of war and neutrality, but one in which
the position of the members of the
League will be determined by the
Covenant and by the Pact"
The Chief Prosecutor for the United States of
America referred in his opening speech before
this Tribunal to the weighty pronouncement of
Mr. Stimson, the Secretary of War, in which, in
1932, he gave expression to the drastic change
brought about in international law by the Pact
of Paris, and it is perhaps convenient to quote
the relevant passage in full:
"War
between nations was renounced by the
signatories of the Kellogg Briand Pact.
This means that it has become illegal
throughout practically the entire world.
It is no