2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 205existing national boundaries in the form of Article 10 of the covenant
and in the form of covenant’s provisions under Article 16 concerning
sanctions. The ‘static’ or inflexible situation that would arise if Articles
10 and 16 were actually observed, Dulles opined, was not practical or
desirable. According to Dulles, the Locarno Treaties also sought peace
by means of consecrating the status quo, albeit only in the context of
Europe.^415 As for the Pact of Paris, Dulles claimed that it was ‘the most
futile’ of all the peace plans: it only allowed for changes obtained by
pacific means, even though it was plain to all that the pacific means in
existence ‘were wholly inadequate to effect changes which are inevitable
and desirable.’^416
Finally in this regard, Dulles condemned the Stimson doctrine of
non-recognition. He stated that although he was not certain whether or
not the facts on the ground favoured the changes wrought by Japan in
China, he thought it was ‘at least conceivable that they reflect a logical
and inevitable tendency’; he suggested that if this were so, labelling these
changes as aggression and denying them recognition was pointless.^417
Dulles concluded in relation to the Stimson doctrine that peace would
not be achieved by turning a blind-eye ‘to actual changes merely because
they result from the only mechanism for change which is available.’^418
Dulles claimed that it was no accident that the governments of what
were then the most ‘powerful, self-satisfied’ states, that is, the govern-
ments of France, Great Britain and the United States, had been the most
busy in drawing up plans for eternal peace.^419 He suggested that these
states had ‘selfishly’ sought to perpetuate indefinitely their preferred
state of affairs and that this explained why in their pronouncements
they equated peace with stability and characterised efforts to change
the status quo as aggression.^420 Dulles opined that if Germany, Japan
and Italy were only reluctant adherents of the peace plans devised by
the most favoured countries, it was not because they were bent on war.
(^415) Ibid., 494.
(^416) Ibid.
(^417) Ibid.
(^418) Ibid., 494–95.
(^419) Ibid., 496.
(^420) Ibid.