will notice the two sets of provisions.  There are those aiming directly at the settlement of disputes without war.  This is the central part of the League.  It is the first thing before you can hope to do anything else.  Before you can begin to build up your international spirit you must get rid as far as you can of the actual menace of war; and in that sense this is the central part of the Covenant.  But, in my view, the most enduring and perhaps the most important part is that set of provisions which cluster round the group of articles beginning with Article 10 perhaps, certainly Article 12, and going on to Article 17—­the group which says in effect that before nations submit their disputes to the arbitrament of war they are bound to try every other means of settling their differences.  It lays down first the principle that every dispute should come to some kind of arbitration, either by the new Court of International Justice—­one of the great achievements of the League—­or discussion before a specially constituted Arbitration Court, or failing both, then 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.