ticular problem on a functional rather than a territorial basis. Its parish was not only the seven African territories to which it gave special attention in the Mandates Commission, but all Africa and all parts of the world where a particular condition affecting labor was to be found.

2. REGIONALISM FOR AFRICA, AT PARIS AND After

The drafters of the Covenant, as was mentioned above in Part I' regarded mandates as one wing of a larger design. The central feature of the design was Universalism, i.e., League action on matters of common world concern which, in theory at least, would benefit the whole world, including dependent territories in Africa. The other aspect of the design was the existing system of Regionalism for Africa in the form of the network of nineteenth-century multilateral treaties dealing with common African problems, mainly of a social and economic character. This was not regionalism in the political sense in which the word was used at Geneva (a local substitute for, or reinforcement of, general collective security), but something more modest. Two very different things were confused by calling them by the same name.

In practice things attempted on a world-wide scale were often ill adjusted to the special needs of the less highly advanced regions. Thus, to an undeveloped African people nine tenths of a highly elaborate international convention like the drugs limitation convention of 1931 must be completely unintelligible. In more than one case, by failing in an attempt to generalize for all countries a measure that Africa needed more than the advanced nations, the League did a disservice to that continent. But the League in general looked askance at regionalism in Africa or anywhere else as a tendency dangerous to League unity. Thus the stream that sprang from the Berlin African Conference of 1885 dwindled away because Geneva diverted from it some of the international energies that for twenty-five years had flowed strongly in this channel. This, it is true, was not the only reason for its drying-up. Another was that American withdrawal from the League involved the withholding of United States ratification of the St. Germain conventions since they were tied up with the League.

The mandate system, on the other hand, flourished. It was a novelty that intrigued the lawyers and satisfied public opinion that something Chapter V, section 1.

generous was being done for native populations. It captured the time and attention of the League. It filled many League documents and figured regularly in the meetings of the Council and Assembly. It took the greater part of the limited time and interest that most governments felt they could give to dependencies. A vast unofficial as well as official literature grew up around it. The illusion was fostered that if a person knew something of the mandate system (or rather of the Geneva end of it), he knew all that mattered of the vast field of dependent peoples. In short, mandates had stolen the show and the old broad view of Africa as an entity was pushed into the background.

This result was all the more striking since the British and American colonial experts concerned with the Peace Conference were even more concerned about perfecting the regional system for Africa as a whole, than putting six or seven of the territories under a new international form of trusteeship-which in any case they thought of as an adjunct to the Berlin Act system rather than as a substitute for it. They took completely for granted that Africa would continue to be treated on a regional basis under the new League system. The regional system of the Berlin and Brussels Acts was the chief point of their writings in connection with the colonial question at the Peace Conference.

Thus, on the British side, Professor Berriedale Keith, in The Belgian Congo and the Berlin Act, written in preparation for the Conference, assumed that the revision and extension of the Berlin Act would "be one of the most pressing duties of any League of Nations." Sir Sydney Olivier, in the pamphlet of 1918 already mentioned, deduced the mandate system in its main lines from the existing regional arrangements for Africa and anticipated that the new system would be an integral part of a regional treatment of Africa. Sir Harry Johnston, a leading British expert on Africa and colonial questions, also writing in 1918, foresaw the League as carrying on the process of "internationalising Africa" as worked out by the powers from 1885 onwards."

On the British official side there was evidence of the same wide views, as witness an outline of British government policy given in November, 1918, by the British Foreign Office to the American Embassy. As reported by the latter to Washington, the proposals included mandates in many areas (including an American mandate for Palestine) and, among

8 Keith, op. cit., p. 301 n.

Sir H. H. Johnston, "International Interference in African Affairs,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, New Series, Vol. XVIII (1918), pp. 26-41.

other proposals for Africa, the following: "Belgian Congo under League with revision acts of Brussels and Berlin to apply to all tropical territory," 10 i.e., to all tropical territory in Africa.

On the American side, A. H. Snow's brief prepared in 1918 for the State Department took the same wide view of the requirements of Africa as a whole. He was concerned not merely with individual mandate precedents such as the "international trusteeship" set up for the "independent State of the Congo," but also with the work of the Berlin African Conference in setting up a "middle African zone of international jurisdiction"; it had given, he wrote, "an international character to the whole territory of middle Africa," making it "to some extent . . . a zone of international jurisdiction under international surveillance." He described the Berlin Conference as recognizing aboriginal tribes throughout Africa as "wards of the society of nations." 11

Still more significant were the views of G. L. Beer, chief of the Colonial Division of the American delegation, who played a leading part on colonial questions at the Peace Conference. In his Peace Conference memoranda prepared as briefs for the American delegation (and published after his death in 1923) he never lost sight of Africa as a whole. The mandate system was only one of his recommendations; he gave much thought to the renewal and strengthening of the broken web of general African treaties dealing with African problems from 1885 onwards. His own recommendations for tropical Africa were on bold lines going far beyond a new form of mandate government for a few African territories. His plan has a fresh interest because it anticipated in certain respects (periodical conference, and collection of data) the way in which the "Declaration regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories" of the United Nations Charter (Chapter XI), as interpreted by the First General Assembly in 1946, may develop. He based his conclusions on a close study of the working of the African treaties since 1885, and his proposals were designed to strengthen them at their main points of weakness. His proposals under the heading of "International Control" were to set up, "as a part of the organization of the League of Nations," machinery consisting of (1) "a special international conference for Tropical Africa, meeting periodically at fixed intervals"; (2) an "African court, having jurisdiction over all cases involving the interpretation of

10 Telegram from Slocum to March, For. Rels. U. S., Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Vol. I, pp. 408-9.

11 Snow, op. cit., pp. 21-22; 131-32, 154.

international acts regarding Tropical Africa and violations thereof"; (3) "a permanent central bureau for the collection, correlation, and study of all the data upon which these international agreements must be based." The bureau was also to be under the League.

"12

3. THE REVISION OF THE AFRICAN TREATIES, and the Rôle

ASSIGNED TO THE LEAGUE

Mr. Beer, in a memorandum in October, 1918, expressed the hope (which was also, as we have seen above, the hope of the British Foreign Office) that the Peace Conference, after disposing of its more urgent business, would "devote its attention to tropical Africa." 13 This hope was realized. Revision of the network of African treaties was made an integral part of the Peace Conference.1 On June 25, 1919, three days before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the five great powers appointed a commission to examine three draft conventions (drawn up by British and French representatives) for the revision of the Berlin and Brussels Acts, and to deal with the arms and liquor trade and other matters of common African concern.15 The Commission (with Mr. Beer as the principal American representative) met fourteen times between July 8 and September 8, 1919. It is clear from the detailed account of the discussions given by his secretary, 16 as well as from the internal evidence of the texts of the revised treaties, that the delegates discussed on the assumption that their work was a whole of which mandates were merely a part, and that the African treaties would operate within the general framework of the League.

Thus an attempt, though rather a half-hearted one, was made to secure the insertion of provisions whereby the holding of periodical con

12 Op. cit., pp. 440-41. See pp. 279-86 for his discussion of these proposals. He held that irregular conferences of limited scope could not secure the necessary support of public opinion. A conference reassembling "automatically at regular intervals," together with "obligatory arbitration," would prevent the powers from resorting to unilateral interpretations of international agreements.

13 Ibid., p. 280.

14 It was taken up immediately after the signing on June 28 of the main treaty with Germany. As the Covenant formed part of each of the subsequent treaties, the revision of the African treaties was closely linked with its enactment.

15 For. Rels. U. S., Paris Peace Conference, 1919, Vol. IV, pp. 856–57. The Commission's report was adopted on September 9, and the treaties were signed next day. Ibid., Vol. VIII, pp. 165, 169-71. See below, Annex X, and note, for list of the revised treaties signed at St. Germain.

16 Beer, op. cit., pp. xxvii-xlii.

ferences for revision and adjustment of the treaties would become the responsibility of the League Council. Under the arms convention of September 10, 1919, revision can take place in seven years "if the Council of the League of Nations . . . so recommends." But there was no reference to the League in the convention revising the Berlin Act and the Declaration of Brussels. Article 15 of this convention provided that the signatory powers "will reassemble at the expiration of ten years" from the coming into force of the convention, i.e., ten years from July 31, 1920, to make "such modifications as experience may have shown to be necessary." No such conference was in fact held, as diplomatic exchanges between the parties, initiated by the British Government in July, 1930, showed no desire on their part to press for any amendments. The convention was regarded by general consent as being still in force at the outbreak of war in September, 1939. By Article 9 of the liquor convention (also of September 10, 1919) the contracting parties "reserve the right of introducing . . . by common agreement after a period of five years such modifications as may prove to be necessary." Here again the League was given no place in the procedure for keeping the convention up to date with changing circumstances.

But in the matter of secretariat, two of the conventions-arms and liquor-gave the League a foothold of which, at least in the latter case, it took little advantage. Article 5 of the Convention for the Control of the Trade in Arms and Ammunition, and Article 7 of the Convention. relating to the Liquor Traffic in Africa, each provide for a "Central International Office, placed under the control of the League of Nations . . . for the purpose of collecting and preserving documents of all kinds exchanged by the High Contracting Parties" with reference to traffic in arms and liquor. Provision is also made in Article 5 of the arms convention whereby parties shall publish and send both to the Central International Office and to the Secretary General of the League "full statistical information as to the quantities and destination of all arms and ammunition exported without licence," together with an "annual report" showing export licences granted. Information of various other kinds necessary for the keeping of an oversight over the application of the convention has to be supplied under a number of articles to the Central Office. Measures required for the enforcement of the arms convention were to be communicated to the Central Office and to the Secretary General of the League; and the parties had to inform them of the competent authorities referred to in various articles. Likewise, by Arti