The Geneva Protocol, by David Hunter Miller

CHAPTER V. 15
The first point to be noticed is that under Article 2 of the Protocol there is a very general and a very sweeping
obligation on the part of the Signatories not to resort to war. This is a point of the utmost importance. The
obligation goes very much farther than anything in the Covenant; the language of this obligation will be
examined in detail hereafter.
Before coming to that, however, it is well to look at the provisions of the Protocol regarding the settlement of
international disputes. War is one method for the settlement of such disputes, and, in order to make effective
the obligation of the Signatories not to resort to war, substitute methods of settlement are provided.
It is very natural and proper that this should be done. A mere obligation not to resort to war, without more,
would almost imply that disputes between the parties to the obligation should {15} find some other method of
settlement. For if some other method could not be found, feelings due to the continuance of the dispute might
well arouse such passions in one country or another as to sweep away the obligation for peace. The two
questions of the ending of war and the settlement of disputes between States are not only logically but
realistically very closely related.
Disputes between States are often regarded as comprising those that relate to international questions and those
that relate to domestic questions, the former being divided into justiciable and non-justiciable disputes.
I prefer, however, for this discussion, to classify possible international disputes in three kinds, namely:
1. Disputes as to international questions.
2. Disputes as to domestic questions.
3. Disputes as to status quo.
I am aware of the fact that such classification as the foregoing is overlapping. Disputes as to the status quo
will to some extent fall within the two classes first mentioned; they may relate therefore to questions which
are international or which are domestic in their nature. However, I think the classification is justified, at least
for reasons of convenience, and also, in my opinion, for reasons which go very much deeper.
Let me illustrate this by reference to questions arising from frontiers. The existence and the location of a
frontier are essentially questions of international import. The location of a frontier may, in a given case, not
only be an international question in the sense that it should be settled internationally, but also in the sense that
it is justiciable, according to the usual idea of justiciable questions. This would be so in a case where the
location of the frontier depended wholly upon the interpretation of a treaty between the two neighboring
States.
But it is quite possible to imagine an international question regarding a frontier which is not in any way
justiciable; such, {16} for example, was the question as to where the frontier between Poland and Russia
should be drawn after the World War.[4] That some frontier had to be drawn was obvious; but there was no
possible legal basis for determining where it should be drawn. The question was one of judgment, to be settled
by agreement between the parties, if possible; or otherwise, if it was to be peacefully settled, by reference to
some sort of tribunal which would decide according to principles[5] of equity, impossible to express in any
precise legal formula. In other words, the question was an international political one.
Again, suppose that the frontier between the two States has been settled by agreement and that there is no
doubt whatever where it is. One of the two States desires to have that frontier changed; in other words, desires
that there shall be a cession of territory. Here is a question of the status quo. In a sense it may be called
international, because it relates to an international frontier; but it not only falls wholly outside any idea of
justiciable questions in the international sense, but also outside any idea of being a political question which