Japan and Iceland are now killing minkes and some other varieties in growing numbers under a treaty clause allowing lethal hunts for research, and allowing the resulting meat to be sold.
But no one, especially reserved Canadians this early in the hockey season, is likely to become this emotional and divided over mere treaty clauses.
Other treaty clauses require members to promote peaceful uses of nuclear energy and to make good-faith efforts toward nuclear disarmament.
The convention allows member countries to enter "reservations" on treaty clauses, indicating that such parts will not be followed.
But he was clearly distressed that some of the dozens of treaty clauses still under discussion were being decided under the pressure of a deadline.
When asked for a definitive, written interpretation of the pertinent treaty clauses, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes pointed to inherent difficulties and explained that the main objectives of the United States were to act against any threat to the Canal Zone or the lives and holdings of non-Panamanians in the two major cities.
Babcock felt MacArthur would probably approve a treaty clause calling for a re-examination of Japan's security situation five or ten years after signature of the treaty.
In the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation of 1894, he succeeded in removing some of the onerous unequal treaty clauses that had plagued Japanese foreign relations since the start of the Meiji period.
At the same time, however, I have to agree with him that under certain circumstances, military necessity clearly trumps any treaty clause or agreement.