5
Dec. 45
France,
Great Britain, and Italy recognized unanimously
that the re-occupation was a violation of this
treaty, and on the 14th of March, the League
Council duly and properly decided that it was
not permissible and that the Rhineland clauses
of the pact were not voidable by Germany because
of the alleged violation by France in the
Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact.
That
is the background to the treaty with the
international organizations that were then in
force, and if I might suggest them to the
Tribunal without adding to the summary which I
have given, the relevant articles are 1, 2, and
3, which I have mentioned, and 4, which provides
for the bringing of violations before the
Council of the League, as was done, and 5 1 ask
the Tribunal to note, because it deals with the
clauses of the Versailles Treaty which I have
already mentioned. It says:
"The
provisions of Article 3 of the present
treaty are placed under the guarantee of
the High Contracting Parties as provided
by the following stipulations:
"If
one of the powers referred to in Article
3 refuses to submit a dispute to
peaceful settlement or to comply with an
arbitral or judicial decision and
commits a violation of Article 2 of the
present treaty or a breach of Articles
42 or 43 of the Treaty of Versailles,
the provisions of Article 4 of the
present treaty shall apply."
That
is the procedure of going to the League or in
the case of a flagrant breach, of taking more
stringent action.
I remind the
Tribunal of this provision because of the
quotations from Hitler which I mentioned
earlier, when he said that the German Government
will scrupulously maintain every treaty
voluntarily signed, even though they were
concluded before their accession to power and
office. Whatever may be said of the Treaty of
Versailles, whatever may be argued and has been
argued, no one has ever argued for a moment, to
the best of my knowledge, that Herr Stresemann
was in any way acting involuntarily when he
signed, along with the other representatives,
the Locarno pact on behalf of Germany. It was
signed not only by Herr Stresemann but by Herr
Hans Luther, so that there you have a treaty
freely entered into, which repeats the Rhineland
provisions of Versailles and binds Germany in
that regard. I simply call the attention of the
Tribunal to Article 8, which deals with the
remaining in force of the treaty. I might
perhaps read it because as I told the Tribunal
all the other treaties have the same lasting
qualities, the same provisions as to ,the time
they will last, as the Treaty of Mutual
Guarantee. It says:
"Article
8. The present treaty shall be
registered at the League of Nations in
accordance with the Covenant of the
League. It shall remain in force until
the Council, acting on