Memorandum on the Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes (Geneva Protocol)

SUMMARY OF POINTS PARTICULARLY AFFECTING THE SAORSTÁT.

I. THE PROTOCOL AND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATE.

There is no provision made for consulting Parliament on a decision of the League Council.

Signatories are automatically bound to apply military, economic and naval sanctions against an aggressor state at the word of the Council. We have no representative on the Council and in two important contingencies decisions can be taken by a two-thirds majority which need not include Great Britain.

These decisions concern:

a) the establishment of an infraction of the undertakings set out in Art. 7 that no State will take any military or economic measures whatsoever during the consideration of a dispute which has arisen between it and another State.

b) the enjoining of an armistice and the fixing of its terms in the case of two states which have actually begun hostilities and in respect of which the Council is unable immediately to determine the aggressor.

On the other hand it requires a unanimous decision of the Council to call off the military and economic measures taken against an aggressor state at the request of the Council.

II. NO ACTION IN PURSUANCE OF ITS OBLIGATIONS UNDER THE PROTOCOL COULD BE TAKEN BY THE SAORSTÁT INDEPENDENTLY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

If Great Britain rejects the Protocol we cannot accept it because:

a) Economic measures taken by us against an aggressor state would be futile so long as Great Britain continued ordinary commercial intercourse with that state and military measures could not be taken in any case so long as the present Convention of the Commonwealth Constitution prevails that the Commonwealth is at war as a whole or not at all.

b) If Great Britain were the aggressor state it would be suicide to take any measures of either an economic or military nature against her.

It is clear therefore that for the purposes of the obligations assumed under the Protocol we are not in the position of an independent state and we have no choice but to act in solidarity with Great Britain.