POSTWAR PLAN NO. 752

...For the League Covenant purported to "guarantee" the territorial integrity of members and to outlaw "unprovoked" aggression or "illegal" war, putting an absolute "obligation" on every member to act on its own initiative against an outlaw...

...There is to be an Executive Council in which a smaller but unstated number of nations is to be represented—although the tough nut of selecting these favored nations is left uncracked by a series of "might bes...

...Hudson's Assembly, by a two-thirds vote, is to have the right, as the League Assembly did not, to change old rules of international law, to lay down new rules, and to "advise" the revision of treaties...

...Actually, the volume is in large part the work of two men: Harvard's Manley O. Hudson who sparked tht entire scheme and McGill University's P. E. Corbett, who assisted Hudson...

...The plan was known, even before its publication, as "Hudson's Plan...

...In 173 lawyerly phrased pages, it purports to outline "The International Law of the Future...

...The World Court is to have power to decide "legal" disputes (mainly those over the meaning of treaty terms) between all nations, not just those nations which agree beforehand to submit their disputes to the Court...

...On Page 1 of the Hudson document, it is stated that the fact of two world wars in one generation "offers an insistent challenge to the intelligence of mankind...

...Even on the internationalists' own level—in the implementing of their pet panacea whereby future wars are to be prevented simply by the use of^force against trouble-makers—Hudson's Plan, although of course approving the idea, goes the old League yet one better at making the pipe-dream impossible of performance...

...These two, over the course of a year, traveled back and forth across the continent from Boston to San Francisco, holding one or two-day conferences with different groups, listening to suggestions and objections, drafting the document themselves...

...Ticklish Problems Ducked There is to be a legislative General Assembly, in which each of the world's 73 nations (as of 1937) is to be represented—although the vexing question whether each is to have one vote, or whether votes are to be weighted according to size and power, is specifically ducked...

...Tool Of Dominant Powers Despite minor differences, Hudson's Community of States remains in essence the League of Nations with all its major flaws and fallacies...

...752 By FRED RODELL BILLED in front-page headlines as the work of 200 eminent Americans and Canadians, a new plan for the postwar world made its debut not long ago and has since been making quite a hit with the boys...

...Vague suggestions of arms limitation and of an international police add little to make the Council's "binding" decisions any more satisfactorily binding—even for those who suppose that wars can ever be beaten to death by force of international arms...

...Hudson's Council, by unanimous vote (except for the parties to the squabble), is to have the new power to decide all "non-legal" international disputes—meaning all the important and war-provoking ones...

...Primarily, Hudson's plan fails because the Community of States, like the League of Nations, would be the tool of the dominant national powers and would collapse in the face of any important dispute among them...

...In the present nationalistic state of the world, Hudson's Postulates, Principles, and Proposals might better have been lumped together as Pieties...

...In several superficial particulars, the Community of States does differ from the old League : Every nation on the globe is to be considered a member, willy-nilly...

...whereas Hudson's proposals guarantee nothing, but merely authorize the Council to prevent force and, by its customary unanimous vote, to take some sort of steps to put a stop to it...

...Hudson's Plan is presented in the form of six Postulates (e.g.—"Any use of force or any threat to use force by a State in its relations with another State is a matter of concern to the Community of States") ; 10 Principles (e.g.—"Each State has a legal duty to refrain from intervention in the internal affairs of any other State") ; and 23 somewhat more specific Proposals...

...for the grant of the right to make "general rules of international law" involves the joker that "international law," as the experts understand it, does not deal, and has never purported to deal, with the world's big and touchy international problems...

...It is worth noting that one of the first decisions of the U. S. Founding Fathers in drawing up the U. S. Constitution was to throw out the idea of a multiple executive (three Presidents) as inevitably tending to obstruct and delay action, even if that action should not have to be taken unanimously...

...and no nation is to have the right to secede or resign, as 16 ^id from the League...

...Among the 196 professors, lawyers, and Government officials who lent the document the prestige of their names—but are relieved, in a prefatory note, of real responsibility for its contents— are such well-knowns as John W. Davis, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, and ex-Harvard Law School Dean Roscoe Pound...

...The third and judicial branch of this "Community of States"—as Hudson labels his world government in careful avoidance of the "League of Nations" stigma— is to be the present World Court, on which Manley O. Hudson is a judge...

...There are to be no more "permanent" seats on the Council, although it is conceded that the biggest powers would probably sit on the Council permanently anyway under any acceptable system of selection...

...International law experts stud the list, although the daddy of them all, John Bas-sett Moore, who was for 26 years a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague, is missing...

...By Page 173, the challenge still stands...

...How any of these decisions —legislative, judicial, or executive—is to be enforced against a powerful recalcitrant is not made entirely clear...

...Hudson's Executive Council—which seems to be endowed with important legislative and judicial functions as well—is rendered practically impotent right from the start by the requirement that its actions be (except for the nations directly involved) unanimous...

...The Assembly is given no real power to lay down laws for the world...

...With the gloss rubbed off it, the plan boils down to a new and slightly streamlined League of Nations...