A.—sd.

1937-38. NEW ZEALAND.

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. REPORT OF THE REPRESENTATIVE OF THE DOMINION OF NEW ZEALAND ON THE NINETYEIGHTH, NINETY-NINTH, AND ONE-HUNDREDTH SESSIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS HELD AT GENEVA IN THE YEARS 1937 AND 1938.

Presented to both Houses of the General Assembly by Command of His Excellency.

NINETY-EIGHTH AND NINETY-NINTH SESSIONS OF THE COUNCIL OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. New Zealand Government Offices, 415 Strand, London, W.C. 2, 17th October, 1937. Sir, — The rules of procedure of the Council of the League of Nations require that the Council should meet in ordinary session four times a year, and that one of the sessions should begin three days before the ordinary meeting of the Assembly. Accordingly I arrived in Geneva with my staff (Mr. R. M. Campbell, Mr. C. A. Knowles, Miss J. R. McKenzie, and Miss E. M. Hannam) on the evening of the 9th September in order to be present at the first meeting, which had been called for the following morning. The agenda of the session is Document C. 320 (1), M. 215 (1), 1937. On the proposal made by the representative of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the 10th September, the item " Unification of Statistics relating to Road Traffic Accidents " was added, and at the meeting held on the 14th September there was also added the appeal of China to the League under Articles 10, 11, and 17 of the Covenant (see Documents C. 376, M. 253, 1937, VII, and C. 377, M. 254, 1937, VII). Some of the items subsequently came before the Assembly, and with these I will not deal in detail, unless circumstances should require a fuller account, but will merely refer to them in the order in which they were taken. The item " Request of the Iraq Government in Accordance with Article 11, Paragraph 2, of the Covenant," which concerned a frontier dispute with Iran, was withdrawn, the dispute having been settled by direct negotiation between the parties. The first meeting was a private one. At it the agenda was adopted and there was some discussion on the programme of work. The president, M. Negrin, the Prime Minister of Spain, stated that when his country's appeal to the League (Document C. 335, M. 226, 1937, VII) came before the Council he would vacate the chair in favour of another representative. Mr. Eden, who represented the United Kingdom, informed the Council that he would make at the first public meeting a statement concerning Palestine. The representative of Roumania, who is Rapporteur to the Council on mandate questions, observed that it was his intention to suggest the appointment of a small Committee of the Council to deal with the matter. The Polish representative, whose country has a direct interest in the question, since it is from Poland that many of the Jewish migrants to the Holy Land are drawn, supported the Roumanian representative's proposal, but at the same time expressed the hope that States directly or indirectly concerned might be allowed to submit their observations to the small Committee. Mr. Eden thought that there would be advantages in adopting the Polish representative's suggestion, but he felt it was essential that the Committee should be composed of persons whose countries had no direct interest. The Secretary-General informed the Council of the receipt by him of a communication from the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Argentine Republic, conveying a resolution of the Pan-American Conference for the Consolidation of Peace held in Buenos Aires in December, 1936, providing for the transmission to the League of the decisions of the Conference. The Secretary-General added that these decisions would be printed in the official journal of the League.

1— A. sd.