392 J.-A. PEMBERTON
E. Corbett, a Canadian specialist in international law and the then chair of
the Pacific Council. In his statement, Corbett, who had prepared a study
for the Inquiry series on international organisation called Post-War World
(1942), sought to explain the reasons for the failure of all the attempts at
establishing a general security system after the First World War. He noted
that the common view in respect to League’s failure in this field was that
the League lacked ‘direct executive power,’ adding that in the eyes of many
this lack was rendered a fatal deficiency by ‘the absence of the United States
from its Councils.’^165
Corbett went on to state that the common view in regard to the
League’s failure was the same as the principal criticism of all the other
attempts at preventing war in the interwar period. He pointed out that
the Nine-Power and Four-Power Treaties which had issued from the
Washington Conference and which concerned security in the Pacific
region provided for nothing more than consultation in the event of their
violation. He also pointed out that the Pact of Paris did not even provide
for consultation were its terms to be breached. The Pact of Paris, Corbett
stated, should be kept ‘in mind, as an example of the futility of declaring
principles without any provision for their realisation in policy.’^166
Corbett observed that not everyone accepted this assessment of the
weaknesses of interwar attempts at collective security. There were those
who still maintained that the limited attempt at organising economic
and military sanctions in order to enforce international obligations in the
form of the covenant had advanced too far in the direction of compul-
sion. Those who entertained this view, Corbett stated, thought that no
scheme relying on the use of force in order to maintain peace should
be implemented in a world organised on the basis of state sovereignty.
However, according to Corbett, those who held this view were now
without doubt in the minority. If there was one major issue on which the
Dumbarton Oaks plan for post-war international security parted com-
pany with League of Nations Covenant, Corbett maintained, ‘it is in its
insistence on the necessity of being prepared to use force in any serious
organisation for preventing aggression.’^167
(^165) Ibid., 99. For Percy E. Corbett’s contribution to the Inquiry series see Akami,
Internationalizing the Pacific, 250.
(^166) International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, Security in the Pacific, 99.
(^167) Ibid., 100.