Maksim Litvinov, Address before the Assembly of the League of Nations. September 21, 1938

Excerpts

The subject before us is the annual report of the Secretary-General on the League's work during the past twelve months. Quite naturally and rightly, however, the speakers so far have dealt, not with what the League has done during this year, but with what it has not done this year or in previous years. Evidently everyone recognizes that the League of Nations was not set up for the activity recounted in the report presented by the League's Secretary-General.

It must not be forgotten that the League was created as a reaction to the world war and its countless horrors; that its object was to make that the last war, to safeguard all nations against aggression, and to replace the system of military alliances by the collective organization of assistance to the victim of aggression. In this sphere the League has done nothing. Two States-Ethiopia and Austria-have lost their independent existence in consequence of violent aggression. A third State, China, is now a victim of aggression and foreign invasion for the second time in seven years, and a fourth State, Spain, is in the year of a sanguinary war, owing to the armed intervention of two aggressors in its internal affairs. The League of Nations has not out its obligations to these States.

At the present time, a fifth State, Czechoslovakia, is suffering interference in its internal affairs at the hands of a neighboring State, and is publicly and loudly menaced with attack. One of the oldest, most cultured, most hardworking of European peoples, which acquired its independence as a State after centuries of oppression, to-day or to-morrow may decide to take up arms in defense of that independence.

I am sure that the sympathies, if not of all Governments, then at any rate of all peoples represented at the Assembly, go out to the Czechoslovak people in this its terrible hour of trial; that we all remember the most active part played by Czechoslovakia and its present President, M. Benes, in the organization and development of the League of Nations; and that all our thoughts are so occupied with the events in Czechoslovakia and around it that we delegates find it difficult to give the necessary attention to the Assembly's agenda-in which Czechoslovakia is not mentioned. There is nothing surprising, therefore, in the fact that the general discussion has centered on what the League of Nations ought to have done, but did not do.

Unfortunately, our discussion has not been limited to the recording and explanation of the League's blunders and mistakes, but, included attempts retrospectively to justify them, and even to legalize them for the future. Various arguments have been used, among them the most favored being a reference to the absence of universality. The shallowness of this argument has been pointed out more once. The League of Nations was not any more universal during the first twelve years of its existence than it is to-day. From the outset it lacked three of the largest Powers and a multitude of smaller States. Furthermore, some States left it; others joined it; and up to the first case of aggression it never crossed anyone's mind-or, at all events, no one expressed such views in the League-that the League could not fulfill its principal functions, and that therefore its Constitution should be altered and those functions, the function guardianship of peace, withdrawn.

No one has yet proved, and no one can prove, that the League of Nations refused to apply sanctions to the aggressor in this case or that because States were absent from its ranks, and that this was the reason why sanctions, applied in one case, were prematurely brought to an end. Even composed as it is to-day, the League of Nations is still strong enough by its collective action to avert or arrest aggression. All that is necessary is that the obligatory character of such actions be confirmed, and that the machinery of the League of Nations be at least once brought into action in conformity with the Covenant. This requires only the goodwill of the States Members, for there are no objective reasons of such a character as to prevent the normal functioning of the League: at any rate, no such reasons as could not be foreseen by the founders of the League and by those States which later joined it ...

At a moment when the mines are being laid to blow up the organization on which were fixed the great hopes of our generation, and which stamped a definite character on the international relations our epoch; at a moment when, by no accidental coincidence, decisions are being taken outside the League which recall to us the international transactions of pre-war days, and which are bound to overturn all present conceptions of international morality and treaty obligations; at a moment when there is being drawn up a further list of sacrifices to the god of aggression, and a line is being drawn under the annals of all post-war international history, with the sole conclusion that nothing succeeds like aggression-at such a moment, every State must define its role and its responsibility before its contemporaries and before history. That is why I must plainly declare here that the Soviet Government bears no responsibility whatsoever for the events now taking place, and for the fatal consequences which may inexorably ensue.

After long doubts and hesitations, the Soviet Union joined the League in order to add the strength of a people of a hundred and seventy millions to the forces of peace. In the present hours of bitter disillusionment, the Soviet Union is far from regretting this decision, if only because there would undoubtedly have otherwise been attempts to attribute the alleged impotence and collapse of the League to its absence.

Having entered the League, the Soviet Union has been unfailingly loyal to the League obligations which it undertook, and has faithfully carried out, and expressed its readiness to perform, all the decisions and even recommendations of the League which were directed to preserving peace and combating the aggressors, irrespective of whether those decisions coincided with its immediate interests as a State.

Such was its attitude during the attack on Ethiopia. The Soviet delegation invariably insisted that the League should do its duty to Spain, and it is not the fault of the Soviet Union that the Spanish problem was withdrawn from the League of Nations and transferred to the so-called London Non-Intervention Committee, which, as we all know, considers its object to be to avoid intervening in the intervention of the aggressive countries in Spanish affairs. The activity of the Soviet Government in relation to the Spanish events, both in the London Committee and outside it, has been permeated with the spirit of League of Nations principles and the established standards of international law. The same can be said likewise of the Chinese question. The Soviet delegation always insisted that the League of Nations should afford the maximum support to the victim of Japanese aggression, and those modest recommendations which the League of Nations adopted are being fulfilled more than loyally by the Soviet Government.

Such an event as the disappearance of Austria passed unnoticed by the League of Nations. Realizing the significance of this event for the fate of the whole of Europe, and particularly of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Government, immediately after the Anschluss, officially approached the other European Great Powers with a proposal for an immediate collective deliberation on the possible consequences of that event, in order to adopt collective preventive measures. To our regret, this proposal, which, if carried out, could have saved us from the alarm which all the world now feels for the fate of Czechoslovakia, did not receive its just appreciation.

Bound to Czechoslovakia by a pact of mutual assistance, the Soviet Union abstained from any intervention in the negotiations of the Czechoslovak Government with the Sudeten Germans, considering this to be the internal business of the Czechoslovak State. We abstained from all advice to the Czechoslovak Government, considering quite inadmissible that it should be asked to make concessions to the Germans, to the detriment of its interests as a State, in order that we should be set free from the necessity of fulfilling our obligations under the treaty bearing our signature. Neither did we offer any advice in the contrary direction. We valued very highly the tact of the Czechoslovak Government, which did not even enquire of us whether we should fulfill our obligations under the pact, since obviously it had no doubt of this, and had no grounds for doubt. When, a few days before I left for Geneva, the French Government for the first time enquired as to our attitude in the event of an attack on Czechoslovakia, I gave in the name of my Government the following perfectly clear and unambiguous reply.

We intend to fulfill our obligations under the pact and, together with France, to afford assistance to Czechoslovakia by the ways open to us. Our War Department is ready immediately to participate in a conference with representatives of the French and Czechoslovak War Departments, in order to discuss the measures appropriate to the moment. Independently of this, we should consider desirable that the question be raised at the League of Nations if only as yet under Article 11, with the object, first, of mobilizing public opinion and, secondly, of ascertaining the position of certain other States whose passive aid might be extremely valuable. It was necessary, however, to exhaust all means of averting an armed conflict, and we considered one such method to be an immediate consultation between the Great Powers of Europe and other interested States, in order if possible to decide on the terms of a collective demarche.

This is how our reply was framed. It was only two days ago that the Czechoslovak Government addressed a formal enquiry to my Government as to whether the Soviet Union is prepared, in accordance with the Soviet-Czech pact, to render Czechoslovakia immediate and effective aid if France, loyal to her obligations, will render similar assistance, to which my Government gave a clear answer in the affirmative.

I believe it will be admitted that both were replies of a loyal signatory of an international agreement and of a faithful servant of the League. It is not our fault if no effect was given to our proposals which, I am convinced, could have produced the desired results, both in the interests of Czechoslovakia, and in those of all Europe and of general peace. Unfortunately, other steps were taken, which have led, and which could not but lead, to such a capitulation as is bound sooner or later to have quite incalculable and disastrous consequences.

To avoid a problematic war to-day and receive in return a certain large-scale war to-morrow-moreover, at the price of assuaging the appetites of insatiable aggressors and of the destruction or mutilation of sovereign States-is not to act in the spirit of the Covenant of League of Nations. To grant bonuses for saber-rattling and recourse to arms for the solution of international problems-in other words, to reward and encourage aggressive super-imperialism-is not to act in the spirit of the Briand-Kellogg Pact.

The Soviet Government takes pride in the fact that it has no part in such a policy, and has invariably pursued the principles of the two pacts I have mentioned, which were approved by nearly every nation in the world. Nor has it any intention of abandoning them for the future, being convinced that in present conditions it is impossible otherwise to safeguard a genuine peace and genuine international justice. It calls upon other Governments likewise to return to this path.

Source: League of Nations, Official Journal. Special Supplement No. 183 (1948), p. 74.