Page:The League of Nations and the coming rule of law.djvu/16

 the League. It would have for the first time a definite right to a voice in all common counsel, not only in special conventions. An equal vote in all matters is not to be expected; no company that I ever heard of gives the same voting power to the holder of a hundred shares as to the holder of a thousand.

Indeed there must be some provision, by Lord Parker's method or otherwise, against the Great Powers or a majority of them being bound on paper by a combination of minor Powers to some burdensome course which they disapprove. Certain paper majorities at the Hague Conferences may serve to point the warning. As for the contrary danger of the Greater Powers combining to partition the lesser ones, as it were, into spheres of influence, the answer is that such a plot could be hatched only by secret agreement, and secret agreements would be expressly forbidden by the constitution of the League. But no materially sufficient number of Great Powers, were they ever so evilly disposed, would in fact agree. The present attempts of Germany, Austria, and Hungary to compromise on their iniquitous ambitions with regard to Poland alone are instructive in this respect.

There remains a great object of the League which Lord Parker has left aside, regarding it apparently as a matter for later development which need not be expressly dealt with in the constituent convention: the restoration and better definition of the law of nations. Here Mr. Taft's proposal holds the field.