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Survey of International Affairs 1928


Auteur :
Éditeur : Oxford University Press Date & Lieu : 1929-01-01, London
Préface : Pages : 508
Traduction : ISBN :
Langue : AnglaisFormat : 140x210mm
Code FIKP : Liv. Eng. Toy. Sur. 358Thème : Général

Présentation
Table des Matières Introduction Identité PDF
Survey of International Affairs 1928

Survey of International Affairs 1928

Arnold J. Toynbee


Oxford University


On the principle that every organism has its vspccific diseases, and every soul its besetting sins, a historian might judge that the institution of War was the deadly disease and the sin against the Holy Ghost of human societies in process of civilization. By the year 1928, such experimental societies had been trying and failing to pass the level of Primitive Man, rising a little and then falling back again, coming into existence and passing away, for something like six thousand years ; and it would a])pear from the records of the past that almost every defeat of these Sisyphean labours was traceable to the institution of War as its ultimate cause.

Why had this profoundly important fact attracted relatively little attention and stimulated relatively little effort to eradicate the fatal institution from the life of Mankind? In the first ...



PREFACE

In this volume, as in previous volumes of the Survey, the first drafts upon the space at the writer's disposal have bcem given to transactios that came to a head in the year under review and to other transactions which were of such evident importance that, even if they did not comc to a head, it seemed essential to keep the annual record of them up to date. Among the transactions of lesser importance, priority has bcon given to those which had Romc connexioll with onc or other of the salient points round which the volume has been constructed. In this way an attempt haR been made to give groater unity of form to the volume than it would be casy to give if it were a strict chronicle of the whole facts and nothing but the facts of a particular calendar year.

The salient ])oints of this Survey of International Affairs in the year 1928 are the negotiation of ‘the Kellogg Ihict’, the development of the constitution of the League of Nations, the policy of Italy in South-Eastern Europe, the history of the Islamic World, and the changes in the foreign relations of China.

The signature of ‘the Kellogg Pact’ was a landmark in the history of the problem of Security, and the chapters dealing with it are followed by others bringing up to date the history of the closely related problem of Disarmament, including the work of the League of Nations and the abortive ‘Anglo-French Naval Compromise' that was in some sense an incidental product of this work.

In dealing with the Constitution of the League of Nations, the opportunity has been taken to give a record, extending over several years, of certain controversies regarding the functions of the Permanent Mandates Commission. These contioversics were impoitant on account of their bearing upon the future of colonial administration.

The policy of Italy in South-Eastern Europe and the changes in the foreign relations of China are examples cf subjects that ecemed of sufficient current interest to demand that the full record given in the Survey for 1927 should be carried on, in the same detail, in the present volume. The record of Italian policy is accompanied l)y a record of other South-East European affairs. The narrative of the changes in the foreign relations of China, in this as in previous years, could not have been made intelligible without also giving some brief account of the internal history of the country.

The history of the Islamic World has been carried, in this volume, down to the end of the year 1928 after having been left untouched since it was dealt w ith (dowm to about the middle of the year 192G) in the first volume of the Survey for 1925. In 1928 Islamic affairs once more came to a head in such important transactions as the aboT’tive Anglo-Egyptian negotiations, the abolition of the (capitulations in Persia, the culmination and collapse of King Amanudlrih’s ‘Westernizing’ policy in Afghanistan, and the substitution of the Latin for the Arabic alphabet in Turkey and in the Turkish States Members of the U.S.S.R.

On the otlier hand, the affairs of North-Eastern Europe and of the American Continent, which were dealt with fully in the Survey for 1927, have not been taken up again in the present volume.' Moreover, owing to lack of space, the record of international relations in Tropical Africa has been left over for the Survey for 1929.

In the present volume, the practice of documenting statements by references to the press in foot-notes has been given up, except where the reference is to the text of some document or to an article wLich is of interest in itself. It is hoped that this change will make the page more readable without really diminishing the value of the Survey as a book of reference. References to official j)ublications and to books are given as before.

The Survey for 1928 is at an advantage over preceding volumes in being accompanied by a supplementary volume of documents. Hitherto, lack of space has made it impossible to do more than publish a few documents in an appendix to each volume simply as a sample of the documentary sources. In the companion volume to the Survey for 1928, one of the original intentions of the Council, in arranging for the production of the Survey, has at last been fulfilled; for this companion volume contains a really representative and comprehensive collection of international documents dating from the year under review, and it has been necessary to include in the Survey itself only two documents which belong to a previous year. Henceforth, the supplementary volume of documents will appear annually side by side with the Survey, from which the appendix of documents will be omitted. The launching of this companion volume is due to the initiative of Mr. Wheeler-Bennett, the Honorary Information Officer of the Institute and Honorary Secretary of the Information Service on International Affairs. Mr. Wheeler-Bennett has undertaken the responsibility of comi)iling this volume, and he and Mr. Toynbee look forward to working in close collaboration in producing the pair of volumes annually. Mr. Milford is publishing the (jompanion volume in the same format as the Survey itself.

G. M. Gatiiokne-Haedy
Honorary Secrctary, Royal Institute of International Affairs.

1 In the Survey for 1927, the Part dealing with the American Continent contains an account of the Pan-American Conference of February 1928.



Part I

World Affairs

A. Disarmament and Security

(i) The General Treaty, signed in Paris on the 27th August, 1928, for the Renunciation of War.1

(a) The Institution of War1

On the principle that every organism has its vspccific diseases, and every soul its besetting sins, a historian might judge that the institution of War was the deadly disease and the sin against the Holy Ghost of human societies in process of civilization. By the year 1928, such experimental societies had been trying and failing to pass the level of Primitive Man, rising a little and then falling back again, coming into existence and passing away, for something like six thousand years ; and it would a])pear from the records of the past that almost every defeat of these Sisyphean labours was traceable to the institution of War as its ultimate cause.

Why had this profoundly important fact attracted relatively little attention and stimulated relatively little effort to eradicate the fatal institution from the life of Mankind? In the first place, no doubt, because the conception of social life without War did not readily occur to the mind of societies in this stage of evolution. The popular imagination was apt to confound the s|X'nies War with the genus violence and thence to assume that War was one of the essential expressions of human nature, if not of life itself. In contradiction to this popular view, sociological research, in the complementary fields of archaeology and anthropology, indicated that War was a specific and peculiar exercise of violence, in which that indefinite impulse was organized in a corporate form and subjected to rigid rules and conventions. Many of these ‘laws of w^ar’ were the direct antitheses of customary social behaviour as practised in the same societies in peace-time; and there was also some ground for believing that this institutional form of violence, as distinct from the violence of anarchy, had not existed in the primitive condition of society in which Mankind had spent all but the last six thousand years of its inconceivably long duration since the first recognizably human beings had appeared on the face of the earth.2 War was an activity of states, and the …

1 This treaty was also known as the Pact of Paris and, in popular usage, as ‘the Kellogg-Briand Pact’ or ‘the Kellogg Pact’.

2 It might he objected that, among primitive societies which still survived in the twentieth century after Christ, the institution of War seemed to be not …




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