78 J.-A. PEMBERTON
sanctions in the event of an infraction, a suggestion strongly endorsed by
a Chinese member.^237
The question of the utility of bare pacts was discussed at Yosemite in
relation to the Pact of Paris. A Canadian member, J. W. Pickersgill, had
that pact in his sights in observing in a paper submitted to the confer-
ence that the Manchurian crisis as well as other recent events had shown
the ‘comparative uselessness of agreements “without teeth”: the compar-
ative uselessness of pacts which prohibited recourse to force but which
did not provide for sanctions in the event of their infraction. That issue
aside, the same member thought that in view of ‘the rise of Japan to first-
class rank’ and the consequent elimination of ‘non-Asiatic naval power
as a paramount factor in Eastern Asia’ and associated with this the ‘risk
involved in the application of economic and long-range naval sanctions’
because Shanghai, Hong Kong, the Philippines and French Indochina
had effectively been rendered ‘European and American hostages given to
Japan,’ it would be very difficult for strategic reasons to put ‘teeth’ into
a security agreement which concerned the Asia-Pacific region. Discussion
of Pickersgill’s paper followed discussion of a proposal by a British mem-
ber. Without seemingly feeling the need to call attention to the fact that
the Pact of Paris spoke only of war and not of aggression, the techni-
cal difficulties consequent upon this fact being another matter that had
come to the fore during the Manchurian crisis, the member in question
suggested that one way of ensuring that the prohibition against aggres-
sion embodied in the Pact of Paris was accompanied by appropriate
sanctions, was by linking it in some way to a set of ‘Regional Leagues’
composed of powers which had special interests in a particular region.
These powers alone would be militarily liable in the event of an infrac-
tion in their region.^238
There was a precedent for this way of equipping the Pact of Paris
with teeth: the LON Assembly’s deliberations on the Sino-Japanese
dispute in 1932 and 1933 had seen it tightly yoke the Pact of Paris to
the LON Covenant and thereby, potentially, to the LON’s sanction-
ist regime. Obviously, the British member’s plan involved a notional
modification of the LON’s collective security system as this system was
(^238) J. W. Pickersgill, International Machinery for the Maintenance of Peace in the Pacific
Area, Canadian Institute of International Affairs, 1936 quoted in Holland and Mitchell,
eds., Problems of the Pacific, 1936 , 191, and Holland and Mitchell, eds., Problems of the
Pacific, 1936 , 189.
(^237) Ibid., 188.