Let me give an instance. The fifth paragraph of Article 4 of the Covenant provides as follows:
"Any Member of the League not represented on the Council shall be invited to send a Representative to sit as a Member at any meeting of the Council during the consideration of matters specially affecting the interest of that Member of the League."
This paragraph gave rise to a difference of opinion as to what States are entitled to sit on the Council when it considered questions arising under Article 213 of the Treaty of Versailles and similar Articles in the other Peace Treaties relating to the investigations by the Council of the armaments of Germany and other countries. When the question came up, the Council took the opinion of Jurists on it and reached a common sense result.[1] Under a general clause giving jurisdiction to the Court in all matters of interpretation,[2] it would seem that any Member of the League could require a question as to the composition of the Council on a particular occasion to be decided by the Court before the Council could meet. It is obvious that any such method of regulating procedure would give rise to impossibilities which should be avoided.
[1] See League of Nations Official Journal, July, 1924, p. 922 and Cmd. 2287 (Miscellaneous No. 20, 1924), p. 16.
[2] Many people suppose that the Supreme Court of the United States has such general powers regarding our Constitution, but this is not so. Read, for example, Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution; and see Massachusetts _v._ Melton, 262 U. S., 447.
I trust that no one appreciates better than myself that examination of a document bit by bit and piece by piece tends to blind the vision. One sees the trees and not the forest. Worse than that, one gets a false vision, a picture, if I may change the metaphor, of the buttons on the coat but not of the man wearing the coat and still less of the soul within the man.
A critical examination of an international legal document leads to a discussion of trivialities and to hypotheses of almost impossible possibilities. Of course it is true that the carrying out of a great international agreement in the light of the facts and conditions of international life as they arise does not proceed along the technical lines that I have followed, but rather along those lines of policy which really control international action. I do not mean necessarily selfish policy, but policy in the larger sense of decisions based upon the best judgment of those in power for the time being.