The Geneva Protocol, by David Hunter Miller

CHAPTER XX. 100
Each Committee, after a general discussion which served to {158} detach the essential elements from the rest
of the problem, referred the examination of its programme to a Sub-Committee, which devoted a large number
of meetings to this purpose.
The proposals of the Sub-Committees then led to very full debates by the Committees, which terminated in
the texts analysed below.
As, however, the questions submitted respectively to the two Committees form part of an indivisible whole,
contact and collaboration had to be established between the Committees by means of a Mixed Committee of
nine members and finally by a joint Drafting Committee of four members.
For the same reason, the work of the Committees has resulted in a single draft protocol accompanied by two
draft resolutions for which the Committees are jointly responsible.
Upon these various texts, separate reports were submitted, which, being approved by the Committees
respectively responsible for them, may be considered as an official commentary by the Committees.
These separate reports have here been combined in order to present as a whole the work accomplished by the
two Committees and to facilitate explanation.
Before entering upon an analysis of the proposed texts, it is expedient to recall, in a brief historical summary,
the efforts of the last four years, of which the texts are the logical conclusion.
HISTORICAL STATEMENT.
The problem of the reduction of armaments is presented in Article 8 of the Covenant in terms which reveal at
the outset the complexity of the question and which explain the tentative manner in which the subject has been
treated by the League of Nations in the last few years.
"The Members of the League recognise that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national
armaments to {159} the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action
of international obligations."
Here we see clearly expressed the need of reducing the burden which armaments imposed upon the nations
immediately after the war and of putting a stop to the competition in armaments which was, in itself, a threat
to the peace of the world. But, at the same time, there is recognised the duty of safeguarding the national
security of the Members of the League and of safeguarding it, not only by the maintenance of a necessary
minimum of troops, but also by the co-operation of all the nations, by a vast organisation for peace.
Such is the meaning of the Covenant, which, while providing for reduction of armaments properly so called,
recognises at the same time the need of common action, by all the Members of the League, with a view to
compelling a possible disturber of the peace to respect his international obligations.
Thus, in this first paragraph of Article 8, which is so short but so pregnant, mention is made of all the
problems which have engaged the attention of our predecessors and ourselves and which the present
Assembly has specially instructed us to solve, the problems of collective security and the reduction of
armaments.
Taking up Article 8 of the Covenant, the First Assembly had already outlined a programme. At its head it
placed a pronouncement of the Supreme Council:
"In order to diminish the economic difficulties of Europe, armies should everywhere be reduced to a peace