discussion before the Council of the League; and Articles 15 and 16
provide that until that discussion has taken place, and until adequate
time has been allowed for the public opinion of the world to operate on
the disputants as the result of that examination, no war is to take
place, and if any war takes place the aggressor is to be regarded as
perhaps what may be called an international outlaw.

Before you begin to build you must have freedom from actual war, and
the provisions have been effective. They are not merely theoretic. I am
not sure whether it is generally recognised, even in so instructed an
assembly as this, how successful these provisions have actually been in
practice. Let me give you briefly two illustrations: the dispute between
Sweden and Finland, and the much more urgent case of the dispute between
Serbia and Albania. In the first case you had a dispute about the
possession of certain islands in the Baltic. It was boiling up to be a
serious danger to the peace of the world. It was referred to the League
for discussion. It was before the existence of the International Court.
A special tribunal was constituted. The matter was threshed out with
great elaboration; a decision was come to which, it is interesting to
observe, was a decision against the stronger of the two parties. It was
accepted, not with enthusiasm by the party that lost, but with great
loyalty. It has been adopted, worked out in its details by other organs
of the League, and as far as one can tell, as far as it is safe to
prophesy about anything, it has absolutely closed that dispute, and the
two countries are living in a greater degree of amity than existed
before the dispute became acute.

But the Albanian case is stronger. You had a very striking case: a small
country only just struggling into international existence. Albania had
only just been created before the war as an independent State, and