4
Dec. 45
longer
to be the source and subject of rights.
It is no longer to be the principle
around which the duties, the conduct,
and the rights of nations revolve. It is
an illegal thing. Hereafter, when two
nations engage in armed conflict, either
one or both of them must be wrongdoers
— violators of this general treaty
law. We no longer draw a circle about
them and treat them with the punctilios
of the duelist's code. Instead we
denounce them as law-breakers."
And
nearly 10 years later, when numerous independent
states lay prostrate, shattered or menaced in
their very existence before the impact of the
war machine of the Nazi State, the Attorney
General of the United States, subsequently a
distinguished member of the highest Tribunal of
that great country, gave significant expression
to the change which had been effected in the law
as the result of the Pact of Paris in a speech
for which the freedom-loving peoples of the
world will always be grateful. On the 27th of
March 1941 — and I mention it now not as
merely being the speech of a statesman, although
it was certainly that, but as being the
considered opinion of a distinguished lawyer, —
he said this:
"The
Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, in which
Germany, Italy and Japan covenanted with
us, as well as with other nations, to
renounce war as an instrument of policy,
made definite the outlawry of war and of
necessity altered the dependent concept
of neutral obligations.
"The
Treaty for the Renunciation of War and
the Argentine Anti-War Treaty deprived
their signatories of the right of war as
an instrument of national policy or
aggression and rendered unlawful wars
undertaken in violation of these
provisions. In consequence these
treaties destroyed the historical and
juridical foundations of the doctrine of
neutrality conceived as an attitude of
absolute impartiality in relation to
aggressive wars. . . .
"It
follows that the state which has gone to
war in violation of its obligations
acquires no right to equality of
treatment from other states, unless
treaty obligations require different
handling of affairs. It derives no
rights from its illegality.
"In
flagrant cases of aggression where the
facts speak so unambiguously that world
opinion takes what may be the equivalent
of judicial notice, we may not stymie
international law and allow these great
treaties to become dead letters. The
intelligent public opinion of the world
which is not afraid to be vocal, and the
action of the American States, has made
a determination that the Axis Powers are
the aggressors in the wars today, which
is an appropriate basis in the present
state of international organizations for
our policy."