352 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )security component, in which the member states promised to aid one an-
other against aggressors. Also included was a provision for applying sanc-
tions (primarily economic) against member states that went to war in viola-
tion of the League’s in- house rules for peaceful settlement.
Two lesser- known elements of the League system should be pointed out, as
being relevant to international law. Both concerned treaties. One was the re-
quirement that all treaties concluded by League member states be registered
with the League secretariat, which would then publish them for perusal by
the world at large. Any treaty that was not registered as required would not
be legally binding. As a result, the League of Nations Treaty Series became a
kind of primitive “online” moving image of the treaty practices of the League
members. If nothing else, it is a gold mine for researchers.
Th e other provision was a somewhat vague one: Article 19 of the Cove-
nant, which empowered the League Assembly to “advise the reconsidera-
tion” of past treaties that might be obsolete or pose a threat to world peace.
Some harbored great hopes for this provision— that it could become the ba-
sis on which the League, in the manner of a true world legislature, could
step in to rectify past cases of injustice in bilateral relations between states,
such as unjust peace settlements in the aft ermath of wars. Th ese hopes
went unrealized, although several attempts were made to invoke Article 19.
In the fi rst year of the League’s operation, the government of Bolivia at-
tempted to rectify a prior peace treaty with Chile (dating from 1904) that
deprived it of access to the sea. In 1925, the Chinese government attempted
to use the provision to have extraterritoriality provisions with Western pow-
ers abrogated. Th ese attempts, however, produced no results. So the provi-
sion proved to be of no practical value.
It may be of interest to note, if only in passing, two interesting proposals
that, in the event, did not fi nd their way into the League Covenant: on reli-
gious freedom and on racial equality. Wilson (the son of a clergyman) was
anxious to include a provision on nondiscrimination on the ground of reli-
gion. Problems arose, though, when the Japa nese delegation sought to amend
Wilson’s proposal, with a provision that would commit League member states
to grant “equal and just treatment” to “alien nationals” of other member
states, without distinction “on account of their race or nationality.” Robert
Cecil, the British delegate, objected that the provision “raised extremely seri-
ous problems within the British Empire,” with the result that both the Wilson
and the Japa nese proposals were withdrawn.