A.—s

apparently attributed to want of preparation, he asked whether any Government with the responsibilities which lay upon the shoulders of Great Britain would have done so much —that is, reduce both Army and Navy to a level below pre-war strength. As to security, he reminded the Assembly of the obligations which Great Britain had undertaken when the Locarno treaties to protect certain western frontiers were negotiated. Yet she was asked to do more. He asked whether some members of the Assembly could not do as much before pressing Great Britain to go further. Was there not " some other troubled frontier which those so anxious for this international action could take under their protection, to which they could give their guarantee in the same manner as Great Britain regarding the western frontiers of Europe, and by so doing bring together two other nations at present regarding each other with mutual suspicion and fear ? " To ask Great Britain to take upon herself for every frontier the obligation she had undertaken under the treaties of Locarno was to ask the impossible ; indeed, it was to ask nothing less than the disruption of the British Empire. He added that he yielded to no one in his devotion to the League of Nations, but not even for the League of Nations would he destroy that smaller but older league of which Great Britain was the birthplace and of which it remained the centre. In saying this he discharged a task which, however unpleasant the duty, had to be discharged. But one may legitimately wonder what was passing in the minds of delegates. We always come back to the Covenant, and Article 10 remains unamended. As to the protocol, Sir Austen said he did not see how its principles could be studied without reopening the discussion of 1924. By all means let the Assembly cherish hope for the revival of the protocol, but what useful purpose could that body serve if it reopened the protocol debates of three years ago before there had been any indication of a change of mind ? This argument doubtless struck the Dutch delegation, since towards the end of that meeting it put forward an amendment to its former motion. The motion as amended reads, — " The Assembly, convinced that, without reopening the discussions on the Geneva Protocol of 1924, it is desirable to consider whether the time has not come to resume the study of the principles of disarmament, security, and arbitration, which are expressed in the Coveant, considering it of the highest importance that the Assembly should give an impulse to the work of the Preparatory Commission for the Disarmament Conference, decides to refer to the Third Committee the study of the above-mentioned principles and the chapter of the Report and Supplementary Report on the Work of the Council and of the Secretariat relating to Disarmament " ; and this, together with the Polish motion, was in due course, referred to the Third Committee. Election op Non-permanent Members to the. Council. Early in the session Belgium made application to be considered eligible for re-election to the Council under the rules passed by the Seventh Assembly. A vote to determine the application was taken by the Assembly at its meeting on the 15th September. Belgium obtained twenty-nine votes, but failed by three votes to obtain the two-thirds majority required ; consequently, under the rules, no votes could be cast for the re-election of Belgium on this occasion. The Assembly then proceeded to elect members to fill three seats on the Council quitted by Belgium, Czecho-Slovakia, and Salvador, and its choice fell on Cuba, Finland, and Canada, for which countries forty, thirty-three, and twenty-six votes were recorded respectively. The new entrants have a three-years mandate. For the first time in the history of the League, a Council seat has been awarded to a British Dominion. The Assembly closed on Tuesday, 27th September, having been in session for twenty-two days. Inhere is little doubt that the failure of the Conference on the Limitation of Naval Armaments had had repercussions, especially in some of the smaller States, and accounted for some of the uncertainty which was felt at the beginning of the session. I think it is true to say, however, that after Sir Austen Chamberlain's speech the comparative gloom of the earlier days was dissipated, and consequently the Eighth Assembly may be called a successful one. Furthermore, towards the end there was certainly a tendency on the part of many delegates to view much more sympathetically the attitude of the British Empire towards the problem of security ; indeed, Dr. Nansen, when speaking on disarmament towards the close of the session, was very appreciative of the British point of view, although he thought that the Empire had perhaps misunderstood the position of the other States relative to the protocol. FIRST COMMITTEE. Accessions to International Agreements. A reference to last year's report will show that the Seventh Assembly passed a resolution inviting the Council to call for a report every six months on the progress of ratifications of conventions and agreements. A report was before the Council in March last, and was commented on by the Polish delegate (see Document A. 12). It was then disclosed that certain States which had acceded to conventions after the closing-date for signature had made their accession dependent on subsequent ratification, instead of considering it complete as from the date of notification. It was this particular point that the First Committee was asked to consider. The First Committee considered that this procedure, which is new, should be neither encouraged nor discouraged, and that obligation should be presumed to be final when a State did not, when notifying accession, expressly mention that it was subject to ratification. The Assembly took note of the First Committee report (Document A. 95) at its meeting on the 23rd September.

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