If the penal clauses are removed from the Covenant I believe that the power of the League to start discussions when nations are drifting to war would be enormously enhanced, because there would be no danger of appealing to that automatic coercion which made things so extremely difficult when we were negotiating in the first days of the Italian Abyssinian Crisis; that automatic coercion which made such difficulties in regard to proposals which are now universally recognised as sound and far more just had they been carried into effect than the eventual result of the war.