1 PEACEFUL CHANGE OR WAR? 77be submitted to the World Court for determination. A Japanese member
responded to this suggestion by observing that there was a ‘tendency in
all countries, not only in Japan, to be unwilling to accept the decision of
any outside Power on vital matters’ and that ‘[p]eople’s loyalties are still
to particular nations, not humanity at large.’ The same member asked
rhetorically whether Canada and the United States would let the ques-
tion of their immigration policies be settled by a ‘Central State.’^234 The
Japanese observation that no government would leave decisions concern-
ing the nation’s destiny to ‘“outsiders” called forth the protest that as
long as a nation reserved the right to interpret a treaty any way it wished’
in matters it deemed vital, treaties would become ‘worthless when most
vitally needed.’^235
In the course of an ensuing discussion of the possible revision or revi-
talisation of the Nine-Power Treaty, one member opined that its signa-
tories had ‘never intended to take the steps necessary to implement it,’
noting that rather than taking those steps its signatories had persisted
with a policy of protecting their special interests in China. Although con-
ceding that recent actions by Japan posed a more direct threat to China’s
integrity than had any of the actions of the other signatories of the treaty,
the same member was insistent that the latter had hardly covered them-
selves in glory in terms of adjusting their relations to China: through
protecting their ‘special interests’ in China rather than relinquishing
them, they had failed, contrary to the terms of the Nine-Power Treaty,
to assist China ‘in gaining independent control of her own political and
economic development.’^236
Leaving aside the question of whether or not the other signatories of
the Nine-Power Treaty had placed themselves in a morally compromised
position vis-à-vis Japan through their sins of commission and omis-
sion in respect to China, it should be noted that in the view of many
members, the failure of the Nine-Power Treaty stemmed fundamentally
from the fact that it lacked coercive machinery. In this regard, a French
member suggested that what was needed was a regional pact which pro-
vided for the collective and prompt imposition of economic and financial
(^234) A Japanese member, 1936, quoted in Holland and Mitchell, eds., Problems of the
Pacific, 1936 , 188.
(^235) Holland and Mitchell, eds., Problems of the Pacific, 1936, 187–8.
(^236) Ibid., 186–7.