VII

REMEDIES

243

meets frequently, but to the Assembly, which wallmeet more rarely and must become, as any onewith an experience of large Inter-Ally Conferencesmust know, an unwieldy polyglot debating societyin which the greatest resolution and the bestmanagement may fail altogether to bring issues to ahead against an opposition in favour of the statusquo. There are indeed two disastrous blots on theCovenant,—Article V., which prescribes unanimity,and the much-criticised Article X., by which "TheMembers of the League undertake to respect andpreserve as against external aggression the territorialintegrity and existing political independence of allMembers of the League." These two Articles to-gether go some way to destroy the conception ofthe League as an instrument of progress, and toequip it from the outset with an almost fatal biastowards the status quo. It is these Articles whichhave reconciled to the League some of its originalopponents, who now hope to make of it another HolyAlliance for the perpetuation of the economic ruinof their enemies and the Balance of Power in theirown interests which they believe themselves to haveestablished by the Peace.

But while it would be wrong and foolish toconceal from ourselves in the interests of " idealism "the real difficulties of the position in the specialmatter of revising treaties, that is no reason forany of us to decry the League, which the wisdom