3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 303inalienable right to choose its own form of national life.’^222 Having
noted that some claimed that the covenant was not in harmony with the
fast-paced rhythm of contemporary international life, Antonsecu stated
the following:
It would indeed be a great error to invoke this dynamic character as a reason
for making the League an institution that would relegate to the background
those principles of justice, order, peace and security that are at the base of
the Covenant in its present form in order to give a so-called juridical and
moral foundation to any unilateral claims that could be satisfied only at the
expense of others. It is not by urging views that are destructive of faith in
international order, it is, on the contrary, by giving each state the certainty
that its political independence and the existing integrity of its territory will
be respected—that is to say, by creating a feeling of security, in the subjec-
tive sense of that notion, that we shall be able to put a stop to the arma-
ments race. It is by... ensuring the efficacy of existing guarantees against acts
of force and violence...that peace may be made a living reality....Hence it is
not the reform of the Covenant that we should contemplate, but the means
for giving full efficacy to its present provisions.^223Fittingly in light of Atonescu’s discourse, Bruce commenced his speech
with the observation that it had become evident to all in recent years
that the maintenance of security and peace the by LON had not achieved
what its founders had hoped it would. He further noted that it was
in light of this consideration that the last assembly had established a
committee with a view to the development of proposals for the more
effective implementation of the ideals embodied in the covenant: the
Committee on the Application of the Principles of the Covenant. Bruce
(^222) LON, special supplement, OJ, no. 169 (1937), 74–5.
(^223) Ibid., 74. Rebecca Haynes notes that Victor Anontescu’s public speeches concealed ‘a
change in foreign policy which took place during his ministry. The breakdown of the French-
backed collective security system and the re-emergence of Germany as an assertive Great
Power by the mid-1930s necessitated a re-alignment of Romanian foreign policy. Although
there was no formal change of alliances, the Antonescu ministry inaugurated a shift towards
a position of informal neutrality between the Great Powers and a corresponding diminu-
tion of Romania’s foreign-policy obligations.’ Rebecca Haynes, ‘Victor Antonescu and
Romania’s Foreign Policy Readjustment, September 1936 to December 1937,’ in Romanian
Policy Towards Germany, 1936–40 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), 19, https://doi.
org/10.1007/978-0-230-59818-8_2.