BANISHING WAR

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 691, 17 June 1929, Page 12

BANISHING WAR

ARBITRATION GAINS FAVOUR FIFTEEN TREATIES IN 1928 Wide acceptance o£ arbitration for the settlement of world conflicts is believed to be steadily undermining the forces that make for war. The successful negotiation of the Kellogg pact renouncing war as an instrument of national policy has been followed by announcement by the League of Nations tha fifteen treaties of arbitration and conciliation were < oncluded between countries in 1925. Only six such pacts were negotiated in 1927. New Peace Methods Two of these fifteen instruments provide for conciliation proceedings as the means of solving disputes, but the remaining thirteen provide for an obligatory settlement of differences. They indicate a tendency, which had its birth in the Locarno treaties, to arrange for a settlement of conflicts by conciliation, arbitration or judicial processes, thereby making it more and more difficult to resort to war. League officials point out that the big feature of twelve of these treaties is that all disputes, judicial or otherwise, are submitted to settlement by arbitration or judicial procedure. Reservations are rare. Nine treaties are absolutely unconditional. War is excluded as a possibility. And it is regarded as remarkable, and especially indicative of a determination to progress along lines of peace, that in none of the treaties is found the oldtime declaration that questions touching national honour and independence shall not fall within the scope of the treaties Reservations Retrospective The principal reservation encountered is that the instruments shall not apply to differences arising from conditions that existed before the signature of the conventions. At the end of 1925, 100 treaties providing for the pacific settlement of disputes had been registered at the League. Sixteen nations are now bound by the arbitration clause of the statute of the World Court of Justice which obliges them to accept the jurisdiction of the tribunal in conflicts of a judicial nature. Furthermore, the "general act” for the pacific settlement of disputes, adopted by the League assembly last September, has now been submitted to various parliaments, including the French Chamber of Deputies. Its acceptance by nations will give another big impetus to the movement against war. The signatories would undertake to submit to pacific settlement "all questions whatsoever” on which they may differ.