The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-02-15
PROVIDES FOR PUBLICITY

imperative article concerning the pub licity of all international agreements. Henceforth, no member of the league can claim any agreement valid which it has not registered Wi III the secretary general, in whose office, of course, it will be subject to the examination of anybody representing a member of the league. And the duty is laid upon the secretary general to publish every doc- ument of that sort at the earliest possible time.
 "I suppose most persons who have not been conyersant with the business of foreign affairs do not realize how many hundreds of these agreements are made in a single year and how difficult it might be to publish the more unimportant of them immediate ly. How uninteresting it would be to most of the world to publish them inn mediately, but even they must be pub liShed just as soon as it is possible for the secretary general to publish them.
 Then there is a feature about this covenant which, to my mind, is one of the greatest and most satisfactory ad- vances that has been made. We are done with ,annexations of helpless peo- pies, meant in some instances by some powers to be used merely for exploita- tion. We recognize in the most solemn manner that the helpless and unde- veloped peoples of the world, being in tEat condition, put an obligation upon us to look after their interests pri- marily before we use them for our in terests; and that in all cases of this sort hereafter it shall be the duty of the league to see that the nations who are assigned as the tutors and advisers and directors of these people shall look to their interests and their development before they look to the interests and desires of the mandatory nation it. self
 GREATEST ADVANCE
 There has been no greater advance than this, gentlemen. Ii you look back upon the history of the world you will see how helpless peoples have too often been a prey to powers that had no con- science in the matter. It has been one of the many distressing revelations of recent years that the great power which has just been. happily, defeated put inholerable burdens and injustices upon the helpless people of some of the col onies which it annexed to itself. that it's interests was rather their extermination than development; that the desire was to possess their land tor European pur- poses and not 10 enjoy their confidence in order that mankind might be shifted from this place to the next higher level.
 'Now the world, expressing it's con- science in law, says there is an end to that, that our conscience shall be settled to this thing. States will be picked out which have already shown that they can exercise a conscience in this matter and under their tutelage the helpless peoples of the world will e me into a new lignu and into a new hope
 PRACTICAL AND HUMAN
 "So, I think I can say of this docu- ment that at one and the same time, it is a practical document and a human document. There is Ii pulse of sympa- thy in it. There is a compulsion of conscience throughout it. It is prac- tical. and yet it is intended to purify, to rectify to elevate. And I want to say that so far as my observation in structs, this is in one sense belated document. I believe that the conscience of the world has long been prepared to express itself in some such way. We are not just now discovering our sym pathy for these people and our interest in them. We are simply expressing it. for it has long been felt, and in the tion of the affairs of more than one of the great states represented here-so far IS l know, of all the great states that are represented here-that humane impulse has already expressed itself in their dealings with their col onies whose peoples were yet at low stage of civilization.
 APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLE
 "We have had many instances of col onies lifted into the sphere of complete Self-government. This is not the dis