332 J.-A. PEMBERTON
It was at this session of the ISC that Coppola had characterised the
idea that a particular state’s security should be a universal obligation as
an anti-human philosophy.^328 Against the background of the unfolding
Ethiopian crisis, Coppola warned of the dangers of attempting to restrain
the vital and dynamic forces at play in the world by means of legal
instruments; he affirmed that legal instruments would not in the end be
able to contain these forces and that the more rigid the instruments of
restraint were, the more ‘violent and destructive’ would be the outbursts
in defiance of them.^329
The contempt Coppola expressed for the system of collective security
and his brazen advocacy of the pagan notion that nations should be free to
make war ‘according to nature,’ were at best icily tolerated at the 1935 ses-
sion of the ISC.^330 Nonetheless, many participants agreed with the prop-
osition that on occasion adjustments should be made to the international
status quo in order to prevent violence breaking out. Jessup (who thought
it better to abandon the term revision in favour of adjustments because
the question of the revision of treaties in its juridical and political aspects
was but a small aspect of the subject and because its ‘connotations’ had
given rise to a ‘mental reaction in certain quarters’), stated in the course
of the discussion in 1935 the following: it is only in dealing with those
‘fundamental disputes and conflicts out of which war arises...that one can
speak of preventing war, whereas by... methods of pressure and the threat
of force, we are merely postponing a struggle from time to time.’^331 Thus,
just as the discussion of the disarmament question lead to a discussion of
collective security, the discussion of collective security lead to a discussion
of peaceful change. The chair of the 1935 session of the ISC, Allan W.
Dulles, observed in a closing address that in choosing the topic of peaceful
change, the ISC was breaking new ground: whereas in taking the subject
(^328) Coppola, ‘The Idea of Collective Security,’ 145–46.
(^329) Ibid., 147. While one may be tempted to liken Coppola’s views to twentieth century
realism, they are more properly described, as Ashworth insists, as a ‘20th-century continua-
tion of Social Darwinism’ in their representation of ‘war and state conflict as a way of main-
taining the strength and vitality of civilization.’ Ashworth, ‘Did the Realist Debate Really
Happen?’ 46.
(^330) Coppola, ‘The Idea of Collective Security,’ 146.
(^331) ‘Discussion: Prevention of War,’ in Bourquin, ed., Collective Security, 269–71. See
also Chalmers Wright, Population and Peace, 5.