"Formerly deemed a divine right and remaining in international law as a prerogative of sovereignty, such a war has now at last been legally stripped of that which constituted its greatest danger: its legality. Branded henceforth as illegal, it is truly outlawed by agreement......." meant a change of the world-order at its very roots, if only all or almost all the nations of the world, and particularly all the Great Powers, signed the pact or adhered to it later on, as did actually happen.
The change is supposed to be the following: Many politicians and scholars all over the world shared this conception. It is the definite basic conception of the unique commentary on the League of Nations Covenant by which Jean Ray influenced far beyond the borders of Franco, the practical and theoretical proponents of the idea of preventing (10) war.
the old tracks after the first World War after a shock from which they recovered remarkably quickly. This to the horror of those who wanted to see the consequences - all the consequences - drawn from the catastrophe.
Mankind had a "grand vision of world peace" then, as Senator Bruce called it when the Pact of Paris was before the Senate for ratification. I know how much the personality and the achievements of Woodrow Wilson are a subject of dispute. But the more detachment we achieve, the clearer it becomes that he - by making happy use of his own preparatory work and that of others - finally (12) conceived and presented to the humanity of the time an entirely brilliant train of thought which is as right today as it was then and which can best be condensed as follows:
It is necessary to start afresh. The tragic chain of wars and mere armistices which are called peace must be broken. For once humanity must have the insight and the will to pass from war to real peace i.e. to peace which is good in its essence - on existing legal foundations, without regard to victory or defeat; and this peace which is good in its essence must be maintained - and maintained in good condition - by and organised union of States. These aims can only be achieved if the most frequent casuses of war, namely excessive armaments, secret treaties and the consecration of the status quo as a result of the lack of insight of the current owner - a consecration which is harmful to vital needs - are eliminated.
Humanity did not follow this path . And it is not to be wondered at that amongst those who fought against the instruments of Versailles, St. Germain, Trianon, Neuilly and Sevres, be it in the camp of the vanquished or in that of the victors, were the very ones who strove after real, lasting peace. When the governments of the South African Union and Canada, in their replies to Secretary of State Hull's principles of enduring peace of the 16th July 1937, indicated in unusually strong words that an alteration of unjust, imposed treaties was an indispensable precondition for real world peace, they followed one of the fundamental views of the great American president.
settling disputes prohibited only in individual cases, but normal on the whole. So said Jean Ray as late as 1930. The League of Nations did not prove to be a guide to the true order of Peace, indeed it did not even prove to be a sufficient brake on a complete backsliding into the old state. For, in fact, the world slid back entirely.
This is then the all-decisive fact in our problem of law. Before the commencement of the second World War the whole system of collective security, even in the scanty beginnings it had made, had collapsed, and this collapse was acknowledged and declared expressly, or shown by unambiguous actions, by three world powers - and, in fact, declared with full justification: League of Nations. I shall show this. the rules of classic international law concerning debellatio. I shall explain this.
The United States declared their strict neutrality. I shall explain the import of this declaration.
The system of collective security has been much disputed over. In this question of the world's conscience, which is also of fundamental importance in this trial, it cannot be a matter of indifference that this system, rightly or wrongly, appeared in 1938 to such a prominent specialist on International Law as the American, Edwin Borchard, as absolutely inimical to peace and as the child of the hysteria of cur age; and the collapse may have had various causes; it is certain that the above-mentioned throe world powers testified at the beginning of September 1939 to the collapse - the complete collapse - and that they did not in fact do this as a consequence of the German-Polish war.
1) On the 7 September 1939 the British Foreign Office told the SecretaryGeneral of the League of Nations: to appear before the Permanent International Court of Justice at the Hague whenever an action is brought against Great Britain, i.e. also in the case of actions which ether states night bring on account of conduct by which Great Britain had, in the opinion of the plaintiff, violated international law during a war. The British government bad accepted this regulation because it had relied on the machinery of collective security created by the League of Nations Covenant and the Pact of Paris functioning: because, if it did function - and as England would of course not conduct any forbidden wars and her opponent would on the contrary be the aggressor - a collision between England and those states that were faithful to the security machinery could not possibly be caused by the actions of British seapower. However the British government had been disappointed in what it relied on: Ever since the League Assembly of 1938, it had no longer been possible to doubt that the security machinery would not function: on the contrary, it had in fact collapsed completely: a number of members of the League had already declared their strict neutrality before the outbreak of war:
"The entire machinery intended to maintain peace has broken down." conclusions it drew. It should not be forgotten that the British Premier, Neville Chamberlain, had already proclaimed on the 22 February 1938 in the House of Commons, i.e. before the so-called Austrian Anschluss, the complete inefficiency of the system of collective security. He said:
"At the last election it was still possible to hope that the League might afford collective security. I believed it myself. I do not believe it now. I would say more: If I an right, as I an confident I am, in saying that the League as constituted today is unable to provide collective security for anybody, then I say we must not delude ourselves, and, still more, we must not try to delude small weak nations into thinking that they will be protected by the League against aggression and acting accordingly, when we know that nothing of the kind can be expected."
The Geneva League of Nations was "neutralized", as NOEL BAKER expressed it later in the House of Commons. 2) In view of the correct conclusions drawn by the British government in their Note of 7 September 1939 to the League of Nations, it is no wonder if the Soviet Union treated the German-Polish conflict in accordance with the old rules of power politics. In the German-Russian Frontier and Friendship Pact of 28 September 1939 and in the declaration made on the same day in common with the Reich government, the government of Moscow starts from the conception of the debellatio of Poland, i.e. the abolition of Poland's government and armed forces. There is no mention made of the Pact of Paris or the League of Nations Covenant. The Soviet Union notes the abolition of the Polish state machinery by means of war, and draws from this fact the conclusions which seem right to her, agreeing with the Reich government that the new order of things is exclusively a matter for the two powers. of 1939/1930, the Soviet Union took up its stand on classic international law. It disregarded the reactions of the League of Nations, when, without even considering the application of the machinery of sanctions and only appearing to apply an article of the Covenant which was intended quite differently, it resolve that the Soviet Union had, as an aggressor, excluded itself from the League. The report of the Swiss Federal Council of the 30 January 1940 to the Federal Assembly tries to save the fact of the League which has been excluded from political realities. 3) The President of the United States stated on 5 September 1939 that there existed a state of war between several states with whom the United States lived in peace and friendship, namely Germany on the one hand and Great Britain, France , Poland, India and two of the British Dominions on the ether hand. Everyone in the United States was bound to obey the neutrality regulations most strictly. States that Europe, and particularly Great Britain and France, saw the main value of the pact outlawing war in the fact that the United States would take action in case of a breach of the pact. The British Foreign Minister stated this on 30 August 1928, i.e. four weeks previous to the signing of the pact.
During the deliberations of the American Senate on the ratification of the pact, Senator Hoses particularly drew attention to this. Senator Borah affirmed at the time that it was completely impossible to imagine that the United States would calmly stand by. After the discredited failures of the policy of collective security in the case of Manchuria and Abyssinia the world had understood the now famous "quarantine" speech of President Franklin ROOSEVELT of 5 October 1937 and the "Stop Hitler": warnings of the sane President before and after "Munich" as an announcement that the United States would act on the next occasion. The declaration of neutrality of 5 September 1939 could therefore only mean: Like Great Britain and the Soviet Union, the United States accepts as a fact the collapse of the system of collective security. blow for the system. The Washington government could reject such a reproach as unjustified. For the system had already been dead for years, in so far as one believes at all that it was ever actually alive. But many did not see the fact that it was not alive at the moment, until the blinding light of the American declaration of neutrality foil upon it. about the various experiments which had been tried since the first World War to replace the "anarchic world order" of classic International Law by a better, a rea, order of peace; i.e. to create in the community of states a general statute according to which there would be wars which are forbidden by law and others which are not forbidden by law. These experiments had, in the opinion of the major powers of the time, collapsed. they used their full strength. For the proponents of the materialistic conception of history this was a second phase in a process developing according to inexorable laws, in which history ignored diplomatic and juridical formulas with supreme indifference.
For the majority of the international lawyers of the world did state: In the general international law at present valid there is no distinction between forbidden and not forbidden wars.
Hans KELSEN demonstrated this in 1942 in his paper "Law and Peace in International Relations" which he wrote after a careful research into the literature. In this he himself belongs to the minority who concede a legal distinction been justified and unjustified wars. His statement therefore carries all the more weight.
But now we mast ask: Are we right in speaking of the collapse of the system of collective security at all? This presupposes that such a system at on time existed.
Can this really be asserted ? This is a question of the greatest importance for this trial, in which the existence of a world wide consciousness of right and wrong is taken as the basis for the indictment for breach of the peace. tragedy from which we all suffered so much, we who rejoiced when the pact was concluded and later, after a first period of depression, greeted the Stimson Doctrine as a long overdue step absolutely essential for the achievement of real peace, and as an encouraging omen of fresh progress. already mentioned. In the League of Nations the problem had been tackled only half-heartedly and with half measures, and this had perhaps done more harm than good to the cause of real peace. The Geneva Protocol had gone on the rocks. Kellog now wanted to get over all the difficulties which are actually essential parts of the problem, and jerk the world out of its deadlock by taking action without worrying much about theories. The published treaty with its two articles, the renunciation of war and the obligation of peaceful settlement, seemed to fulfil the longings of a humanity which wanted to see at last the act which would liberate it. inherent in the problem, and no regulations made by any legislator can ever eliminate them completely. For even if one disposed of unambiguous criterions, who among us fallible human beings would have the authority to give a decision in case of dispute ? defence. This holds both for the so-called political concept, which is in a way the natural one, and for the legal concept or concepts of aggression and defence. implicitly by the French Government in the preliminary negotiations for the pact, and this with the full right of one who knows Europe and its very old historical legacy in the way the United States Government knows America and its quite different history. Even if somebody were capable of jumping over his won shadow, the shadow cast by European history is so much longer.
nagotiations, with all the definitions, interpretations, qualifications and reservations, it became manifest to what an extent the opinions of the government's differed from one another despite one and the same wording. One saw the Soviet Governments open -even bitter- criticism of the refusal of the Western Powers to disarm and thus create the essential precondition for an effective policy of peace, further of the vagueness of the treaty but especially of the famous English reservation of a free hand in certain regions of the world, the reservation which has often been called the British Monroe Doctrine or the Chamberlain Doctrine, and one knew that in reality there existed only formal agreement behind the signatures and that no two powers understood exactly the same thing by the treaty. Only on one thing did complete agreement exist : War of self defence is permitted as an unalienable right of all states; without this right, sovereignty does not exist; and every state is alone judge of whether in a given case it is waging a war of self-defence. nong the question of whether its decisions on ultimate questions of existence were justified or not. tiations, in his Note of the 25 June 1928 :
".....The right of self-defence .... is inherent in every sovereign state and is implicit in every treaty. - Every nation ... is alone competent to decide whether circumstances require recourse to war in self-defence.
What was the use of such a treaty anyway.? of the discussions in the American Senate. The ratification was, it is true, passed with 85 votes against one, with few abstentions, but, if behind the signatures of the contracting states there was no material agreement, there was even less behind the result of the vote in the Senate of the leading world power ideologically and as far as the initiative was concerned.
because of their profound seriousness and loftiness shown -- and several Senators expressly said so- that the opinions of the Senators oscillated between two poles which were worlds apart. For some the treaty really meant a turning-point; to others it appeared worthless, or, at best, a feeble or friendly gesture, a popular slogan, a sort of international kiss, to still others a fertile soil for all the wars of the future, a gigantic piece of hypocrisy even the legalisation of war or of British world control, or the guaranteeing of the unjust status quo of Versailles for France and Great Britain. Some senators criticized the complete vagueness of the stipulation. of the treaty even more sharply than the Russian Note. And if one took Kellogg's declaration about the right of self-defence, which, according to the will of the signatory states, was an integral part of the treaty, literally : what kind of war was then forbidden at all ? Sarcastic and ironic words were used. it stood at its conclusion. In the opinion of the great American expert on International Law, Philip Marshall BROWN, the pact unwittingly engendered by its ineptness the horrible monster of "undeclared war". progress was blocked, and those who criticized the League of Nations, Germans and non-Germans, because it did more harm than good to the will for progress, had all rejoiced for nothing at the end of August 1928. The decisive step had not been taken. indispensable if a guarantee of peace is really to be created, the one thing that in the unanimous opinion of all who reckon with human beings as they really are is necessary, was not tackled at all : against the will of the possessor, change conditions that have become intolerable, in order to provide life with the safety-valve it must have if it is to avoid an explosion.
legislation and by adjusting the laws to the altered manner of life in good time, so it is with the community of states as well . Wilson also had this fundamental principle in mind as we saw. One of the great British experts on international law, one of the enthusiastic, unconditional and progressive adherents of the Paris Pact, McNAIR, took this into account too when, in 1936, he wanted to have placed beside collective force the collective and peaceful revision of conditions which had become, dangerous. This was taken into account by the American experts on International Law, BORCHARD and FENWICK, in their warring explanations of the aspects of the situation connected with international law, shortly before the second World War. The Government of the German Reich had, by the way, pointed out this problem which overshadowed all others, in Stresemann's Note to the American Ambassador dated the 27 April 1928, when unconditionally agreeing to Kellogg's proposal.
The problem of "collective revision" was not seriously tackled later on either. This is not surprising, if only because the very character of such an institution presupposes renunciation of their sovereignty by the states. And can such a reninciation be considered in the times we live in ? Philip BROWN melancholically thinks that this is less possible than ever. And for this reason a real forward stop in the question as to how war could literally be outlawed was not practicable. great, deal to satisfy the urgent demands of the nations in spite of these inextricable interdependences. They subsequently tried to give the pact a precise content and "teeth". The science of international law provided suggestions for this and checked it. We must also trace this process briefly even though it remained completely unsuccessful, because the seeds of the ideas contained in the Indictment are to be found here, insofar as its line of argument is not a political or ethical, but a legal one.
Firstly: In its ban on aggression, the Paris Pact unquestionably starts from the political concept of aggression. But in that it is quite indefinite.
SHOTWELL and BRIERLY, among others, tried to help immediately by deducing a legal concept of aggression from the second Article of the Treaty, which Article establishes the obligation to follow a procedure of peaceful settlement. We can leave open the question whether this interpretation may be applied to the treaty. In practice nothing is actually gained by doing so; one kind of difficulty is simply put in the place of another. There are no fewer obscurities: the measures of peaceful settlement presuppose good will on both sides; what, then, if is lacking on the ether side ? And what is still a measure of peaceful settlement and what is one no longer ? The Russian Government was quite right in the above-mentioned note of 31 August 1928 to the Briand-Kellogg Pact when it expounded this question.
Then : Other attempts to help tried to develop a completely new world constitution from the entirely indefinite pact by means of logic. They are connected with the name of the American Secretary of State Stimson and with the work of the Budapest Meeting of the International Law Association in 1934. really brought about, in a legally definable manner, an unambiguous and unconditional renunciation of war. Then of course, there no longer exists the right to wage wars as and when one likes. War waged against this prohibition is an offence against the constitution of the community of states. We are immediately faced by the question: the same as that of a State which is attacked contrary to law ?
If one answers: No, as does for instance the influential French commentator of the League of Nations Covenant, Jean Ray, does this then mean the elimination of the most important fundamental principles of classic International law ?
right to wage war freely and the duel-like character of war and, at any rate, the equality before the law of the belligerents - appl, for the appreciation of the actions of the belligerent powers again one another? still exist in such a war? recognized by law, especially if it is put into the form of a treat, or must not the community of States deprive the aggressor of the spoils of his victory by a policy of non-recognition? Should there be, or perhaps even must there be, common coercive action by the states against the agressor?
It must be noted: Not even the theory of law has drawn all the conclusions. The practice of the states, after a few tentative beginnings in isolated points, did not finally carry things to a conclusion in a single case.
With regard to the first point: whatever the latter's origin, has not as yet been seriously dispute by any state. Any doubts that arose were cleared up in a way which allowed of no misunderstandings. I draw attention to Resolution No 3 of the League of Nations Assembly of the 4 October 1921 and to the report of the Committee of Eleven of the League of Nations for the adaptation of the Covenant to the Pact of Paris. The aggressor state has the same rights and duties in a war as the attacked nation, i. e. those laid down by the traditional interaction. al laws of war. The French Chief Prosecutor appears to wish to deviate from this line, but not to wish to draw the full conclusion. But I do not see any tendency to deviate from the present path even in the most recent practice of states.
With regard to the second point: by neutrality, and in fact finally to give the states not involved the right of non-neutrality and oven the right to wage war against the aggressor.
Some statesmen and scholars have devoted themselves just as passionately to undermining and even to denying the right to neutrality as other statesmen and scholars have spoken in favour of its undiminished continuance. The clearer it became that the whole system of collective security did not function in the particular cases which were of decisive importance, namely in those cases where steps would have had to be taken against a great power, the more the idea of neutrality asserted itself with new strengths. The complete discrediting of the League of Nations and of the syste of the Briand-Kellogg Pact in the Abyssinian conflict put classic international law back in its old position again here too. In 1935 Switzerland declared her unrestricted neutrality; Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Luxemburg, Norway, Holland and Sweden followed with their Declaration at Copenhagen on 24 July 1938. The failure of the League of Nations was the reason, this fact also being mentioned openly.
With reference to the third point: The states not involved in a conflict should conduct themselves as members of the community of states, i. e. they should protect the constitution of the community of states by refusing to recognize the fruits of the victor's victory, should he have been the aggressor. The situation he has created by force should not even seem to become a legal situation. He will thus be deprived of what he has gained, and one of the main inducements to wage war will thereby be eliminated. Such a policy of non-recognition is undoubtedly not enough to guarantee a system of collective security by itself, but it is an indispensable part of such an order. There can be no dispute about this. The Brazilian representative BRAGA gained merit by proposing, at the 2nd League assembly in 1921, such a policy to be followed by the members of the League of Nations under the name of a "universal juridical blockade" (blocus juridique universal).
The Finnish representative PROCOPE interpreted Article 10 of the Covenant in this sense in 1930 before the League Assembly. The Notes of the American Secretary of State STIMSON of 7 January 1932 to CHINA and JAPAN made this idea echo throughout the world. Their contents are commonly called the Stimson Doctrine. The League of Nations accepted the Doctrine as a resolution of the Assembly dated the 11 March 1932. The idea was later the central point of the Pact of Rio de Janeiro of 10 October 1933 and of the Budapest Articles of 10 September 1934. The conflict between Italy and Abyssinia in 1935/36 became the great test-case, which decided the fate of the system of collective security: The League of Nations declared a member which was a great power to be the aggressor and decreed economic sanctions, but then shrank from coercive military measures and finally, after Italy's victory, struggled painfully in debates on procedure, especially at the 18th Assembly of the League, to find an answer to the question as to how the League, without openly betraying its constitution, could cross the attacked member, the minor-power Abyssinia, off the list of existing states and recognize it as part of the Italian Empire. The United States also did not enforce the Stimson Doctrine, but remained strictly neutral.
It is necessary to know all this; and also to know that the British Government on 20 February 1935 politely but firmly refused, through the Lord Chancellor, Viscount Sankey, to accept the logical deductions, and paid tribute to the old truth : it is not logic but history that creates law.
On a later occasion, when Secretary of State Cordell Hull had explained the principles of American policy to all the powers on the 16 July 1937, the Portuguese government isued a warning against "the abstract and generalizing tendency of jurists"; it warned against attempts to "find a single formula" and against not studying historic facts sufficiently.
We therefore come to the conclusion that : during several years prior to 1939 - no effective general ruling of international law regarding prohibited war. peoples were aware. international law was followed to an over increasing extent : two states would then conclude treaties, in full knowledge of their particular historical conditions and with a view to securing peace between themselves. help Great Britain. Great Britain was able to acquire destroyers and it later received the assistance of Lend-Lease. The American public recognised this act of assistance as being essentially no longer neutral; it was regretted by some, welcomed by others, now attacked and now defended. The supporters of the measures before the American public, above all Stimson and Cordell Hull, quite rightly did not attempt to justify them as consistent with neutrality. On the contrary, they took up their stand on the Pact of Paris as interpreted by the Budapest Articles. As we saw, this would, according to Viscount Sankey's indisputably correct conception of what are the sources of international law, have been wrong even in 1935.
After the developments which had taken place since Italy's victory over Abyssinia, such discussions were entirely outside the field of legal realities. Their purpose was to resolve internal dissensions in America and they could therefore be of no direct importance for international law. Even had these discussions taken place between states, they could at most have helped to create law. But is it actually necessary to assert or prove that such discussions could not have created, during the great struggle, a law to attain which so many efforts - efforts which proved to be Utopian - were made in vain in peace-time ? In this court many ways of legal thinking meet - ways which are in part very different.
This leads to certain insoluble differences of opinion. But no way of legal thinking anywhere on earth, from the most ancient times to the most recent, could or can make possible arguments which contradict the very nature of law as a social order of human life arising out of history. If several governments accept articles, about the contents of which they are of different opinions, and if these articles then find no real application in the practice of these governments - which is not to be wondered at considering the circumstances under which they arose - and it theorists then interpret these articles and the practice of Governments rejects these interpretations either expressly or tacitly, one must then resign oneself to this, in so far as one wants to keep to the task of legal appreciation, no matter how much the goal may be worth striving for politically or morally. following the Italo-Abyssinian conflict. Let us suppose for a moment that a general and unambiguous pact had existed, accepted and applied by the Contracting Parties in fundamental and factual agreement. Would the liability of individuals to punishment for the breach of such a treaty be laid down in international law ? individuals. at present valid from any other violation of international law. The state which violates a treaty would commit an offence against international law, but not a punishable act. Attempts were occasionally made to deduce from words "delit" (offence), "crime international" (international crime) and "condamnation de la guerre" (condemnation of war) the existence of an International Criminal Law dealing with our case. Such conclusions are based on wrong premises. Every lawyer knows that any unlawful behaviour can be called a "delit" (delictum), not only punishable behaviour. And the word "crime" is used even entirely outside the legal sphere. And this is precisely the case here. When, in 1927, on Poland's application, the League of Nations Assembly declared war to be an international crime, the Polish representative expressly stated that the declaration was not actually a legal instrument, but an act of moral and educational importance.
on a legal basis failed. But this does not mean that the numerous bilateral treaties, whose purpose it is to preclude wars of aggression between the two partners, became inapplicable. One will actually have to examine whether the parties to the treaty may have made the existence or continued existence of a general machinery of collective security the prerequisite for the validity of the treaty. bilateral treaties. assurances were given. In some cases the political and in some a legal concep of aggression, and even a number of such legal concepts side by side, determine right and wrong. The German Reich also concluded a series of such pacts. They have been drawn upon by the prosecution as an argument. One must examine whether all these treaties were still in force at the critical moment. This examination must be left to the individual defence counsel. But if the German Reich did attack in an individual case in breach of a non-aggression pact which was still valid, it committed an offence in international law and is responsible therefore according to the rules of international law regarding offences in international law.
But only the Reich. Not the individual, even if he were the head of the state. valid.
It is unnecessary even to speak about this. For up to the most recent times not even the possibility has been mentioned, either in the Manchurian, or in the Italo-Abyssinian or in the Russo-Finnish conflict, of instituting criminal proceedings against those people who were responsible, on the Japanese Italian or Russian side, for planning, preparing, launching and prosecuting the war, or who simply participated in these acts in any way. And it was certainly not because matters had, paradoxically enough, not been thought out to the end, that they were not prosecuted. But they were not prosecuted because this can not happen as long as the sovereignty of states is the organizational basic principle of the whole inter-state order.
THE PRESIDENT : I think this would be a convenient time to break off.
(A recess was taken) DR. JAHRREISS: S hould things reach the point where, according 4 July M LJG 6-1 to general world law, the men who participated in the planning, preparation, launching and prosecution of a war forbidden by international law could be brought before an international criminal court, the decisions regarding the state's ultimate problems of existence would be subject to super-state control.
Ono could of course still call such states sovereign, but they would no longer be sovereign. In his paper of late 1943 which I have already mentioned several times and which he wrote after the Moscow conference of the 1 November 1943, Kelsen again and again repeats the phrase that in questions of breach of the peace, the liability of individuals to punishment does not exist according to the general international law at present valid and can not exist on account of sovereignty. centuries, above all since the ever more rapid advances made by the idea of the national state, gained the dignity of a superperson.
Of course acts of state are acts of men. But they are in fact acts of state, i.e. acts of the state carried out by its organs and not the private acts of Mr. Smith or Mr. Robinson. community as alegal entity, it wants to have individuals legally sentenced for their decisions regarding war and peace, is, when one looks at it from the angle of European history, to look upon the state as one would look upon a private individual, indeed, more than that, what it is doing is to destroy the state mentally. Such a charge, the moral justification of which is not my concern-such a charge is, as we have already shown, incompatible with the very nature of sovereignty and with the feeling of the majority of Europeans. It seems, indeed, as though not only Europeans feel that way. In 1919, in Paris, it was the American delegates at the War Guilt investigation Committee who opposed most strongly any legal sentence on the Kaiser for the very reason of the incompatibility of such a procedure with the sovereignty of the State. And it is impossible to recognize the idea of sovereignty more strongly than Kellogg did eight years later during the negotiations 4 July M LJG 6-2 in connection with the Pact of Paris, when he declared, as I have already said, "Every state is the solo judge of its behaviour with regard to questions affecting its existence."