Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1939, Page 140
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LE NORD
I may be permitted to recall here a press interview that I gave
on the ijth of July, 1935, regarding the future of the League of
Nations, and which at that time was widely published. In this
interview I pointed at the dissolution of the fundamental idea of
the League caused by the agroupment of the Great Powers and
by their proceedings independent of the League. Speaking a few
months before the Ethiopean War, I suggested the probability
of the withdrawing of Italy and warned against the danger that
the League might become an instrument of one particular group
of Powers. In my opinion, the only thing that might give a basis
for a favourable development of League politics, would be a
general agreement on disarmament; instead of which we had a
general re-armament. My conclusion was that it would be in the
interest of the small states to see the obligation of sanctions taken
out of the Covenant of the League, so that, principally, she would
have to limit herself to her non-political activities. Otherwise the
membership might become a danger to them.
What I said then, was made practical politics by the events
of the next year. At the moment when the League of Nations
was compelled to admit the failure of her sanctions against Italy,
the foreign ministers of the countries in the group of so-called
“ex-neutrals” within the League, viz. Denmark, Spain, Finland,
the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, on July
ist, 1936, published a communication to the Press announcing that
the latest events in world-politics had evoked in their nations the
question whether the conditions under which they had entered
into the obligations of the Covenant of the League were still in
force to a sufficient degree. In their opinion the Covenant formed
a consistent whole, so that it would be impossible to apply certain
articles, tacitly understood that of sanctions, if other articles,
especially mentioned that of disarmament, were disregarded; and
the seven ministers concluded by declaring that they would have
to consider this fact if the application of sanctions were demanded
in the future.
This was the first direct warning from the small nations that
they might feel themselves compelled to enter upon a line of
neutrality even within the League of Nations. They were not at
all interested in seeing the League weakened. On the contrary,
to them the League represented ever more clearly the only hope
of promoting international justice and peace, But from recent
experiences they conceived that the League was not yet ripe for