3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 331arms and were thus deeply sceptical about the worth of bare pacts that
they were often described in the interwar period as realists.
The question of the LON’s role in respect to collective security which
had somewhat slipped into the background in the course of the 1920s,
was revisited in the context of the debates over disarmament in 1932 and
1933 in Geneva. Revisiting the question of collective security was unavoid-
able in the context of the disarmament negotiations because, as Madariaga
explained, despite the fact that the Pact of Paris outlawed aggression,
armaments retained their utility as instruments of policy and no disarma-
ment was possible as long as this remained the case.^324 The optimum way
in which to reduce the utility of armaments, according to Madariaga and
those who shared his outlook, was effective international government, with
many of those embracing this position insisting on the need to supplement
and strengthen the covenant with ‘specific and automatic guarantees for
the enforcement of international obligations.’^325 Frank M. Russell, a mem-
ber of the American National Committee on Intellectual Cooperation,
observed in 1936 in Theories of International Relations, that France and
certain other states on the continent who felt vulnerable because of their
geographical proximity to the ‘defeated and dissatisfied powers,’ insisted
on such guarantees because they were ‘the only safe alternative to a
dependence on their own armed strength.’^326
The issue of collective security was given sustained attention at the
ISC’s 1935 session in London. In an opening address at that session,
Austen Chamberlain offered what was a typically British assessment of
the LON’s capabilities as an instrument of security: the League’s powers
of deterrence consisted in the public opinion which it represented and
the moral judgements which it could pass. As to the conception of the
League as the institutional embodiment of a common system of mutual
guarantees, Chamberlain observed that universal security guarantees
called for sacrifices on the part of the nations undertaking them that they
could not reasonably be expected to make.^327
(^324) Frank M. Russell, Theories of International Relations (New York: Appleton Century
Crofts, 1937), 442.
(^325) Ibid., 443.
(^326) Ibid., 445n.
(^327) ‘Addresses Delivered at the Inaugural Meeting,’ in Bourquin, ed., Collective Security,
- For Austen Chamberlain’s view of the League as a ‘moral force,’ see also Birn, ‘The
League of Nations and Collective Security,’ 145.