Page:The league of nations and primitive peoples (IA leagueofnationsp00oliviala).pdf/18

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14
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

should be prescribed in regard, for example, to the Colonies which have been conquered from Germany, then, clearly, they must equally be made the law of the League for any territories whose sovereignty may be changed as for those that may be resettled under the same sovereignty. Nor will it be possible for Powers who concertedly attach such trusts to any sovereignties that they deal with jointly, to refuse to acknowledge similar obligations in respect of the territories which they already severally hold. The more successful Colonial Powers would have no reason to shrink from entering into such a self-disciplining compact; its enforcement on some of the less efficient now in control of primitive peoples would be distinctly desirable; and no Council acting on the lines which have been suggested, as an organ of a League of Nations, could, without glaring hypocrisy, refuse to call for such houses to be set in order.

The establishment of such a Council, acknowledging the Romano-Christian notion of supernational Right as paramount above the individualism, commercialism, and Might-politic that dominated the Partition of Africa, and has borne its appalling fruit in the barbarization of Europe, has been recognized for a generation, by all who have watched the facts, to be essential for the preservation of primitive peoples. It will now have the immense reinforcement of the spirit of America, the youngest and most boldly liberal of Colonial Powers, though she, too, may still have something to learn at home.

There have been several tentative and imperfect