Geneva Protocol (1924)

The Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes was a proposal to the League of Nations presented by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, and his French counterpart Édouard Herriot. It set up compulsory arbitration of disputes, and a created a method to determine who was the aggressor in international conflicts. All legal disputes between nations would be submitted to the World Court. It called for a disarmament conference in 1925. Any government which refused to comply in a dispute would be named an aggressor. Any victim of aggression was to receive immediate assistance from the League members. The Conservatives in Britain condemned the proposal, fearing it would lead to conflict with the United States. Washington also opposed it, and the proposal was tabled.

The Protocol envisaged wide-ranging regulations to bring about general disarmament, effective international security and the compulsory arbitration of disputes. In the Geneva Protocol the member states would declare themselves “ready to consent to important limitations of their sovereignty in favor of the League of Nations” (Wehberg). After preliminary approval on 2 October 1924 by all the 47 member states of the League of Nations at the 5th General Assembly, however, it was not ratified by Great Britain the following year under the newly elected government of Stanley Baldwin, with Austen Chamberlain as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (from 1924 to 1929). The Protocol subsequently failed to materialize.

External links

• Text of the protocol
• Text of British Cabinet resolution of March 2, 1925 not to ratify the protocol, from the UK National Archives
• Report made by Imperial Defence Committee, recommending to the UK government not to ratify the Geneva Protocol, from UK National Archives
• The Geneva Protocol at Project Gutenberg (A book about the agreement by David Hunter Miller)

Bibliography

• Burks, David D. "The United States and the Geneva Protocol of 1924: 'A New Holy Alliance'? American Historical Review (1959( 64#4 pp. 891-905 in JSTOR
• Noel-Baker, Philip (1925). The Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes. London: P. S. King & Son Ltd. 
• Wehberg, Hans (1931). The Outlawry of War: A Series of Lectures Delivered Before the Academy of International Law at the Hague and in the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales at Geneva. Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.