League Council Clashes with Mandates Commission; Details of Dispute

(Jewish Telegraphic Agency Mail Service)

M. Unden, in his report to the League of Nations Council on the work of the Permanent Mandates Commission during its ninth session in June, made the impression of being extremely anxious not to make any definite demands on the Mandatories with regard to the proposal of the Mandates Commission that facilities should be given to inhabitants of the mandated territories to make complaints against the Mandatory Powers by word of mouth before the Mandates Commission. Although the Commission in view of the delicate nature of the question, he said, has thought it best not even to make a recommendation to the Council before the Council has had an opportunity of expressing an opinion on the question of principle, the discussions of the Mandates Commission show that its members have in mind rules so restrictive that the hearing of petitioners would only take place in very rare and exceptional cases. It has been thought, he said, that it should constitute itself as a kind of tribunal to deliver judgments on differences between petitioners and the Mandatory Power.

“Personally,” M. Unden wen. on, “I am inclined to think that the Mandates Commission should be authorized to make a draft proposal containing rules for the hearing of petitions to be submitted to the Council at a later session.”

M. Under also raised the question of revising the questionnaire drawn up by the Mandates Commission for submission to the Mandatory Powers to guide them in the preparation of their reports to the Mandates Commission on their administration of the mandated territories. The work of the last few years, he said, has brought to light a number of other points of importance which were not mentioned in the questionnaire and has shown that a certain amount of duplication has resulted from the fact that the report and the answers to the questionnaire have as a rule been given separately. At the request of the Commission, the Secretarial, he continued, has been preparing tables giving a certain amount of fundamental statistical information on the various mandated terriotries. In several instances, however, the annual reports of the Mandatory Powers have not contained all the particulars necessary for the completion of these tables.

With regard to Palestine, M. Unden said that four petitions were treated at length in an annex to the report of the Commission. “I think,” he said, “that the conclusions of the Mandates Commission should be endorsed by the Council and communicated to the petitioners and to the Mandatory Powers concerned in accordance with past practice.”

On the question of the hearing of petitions, the resolution as redrafted and submitted by M. Unden today and accepted by the League of Nations Council reads:

The Council as regards the Mandates Commission’s observations on the question of the hearing of petitioners in structs the Secretary General to request the Mandatory Powers to inform the Council of their views on the question of the advisability of authorizing the Permanent Mandates Commission to hear petitioners in certain exceptional cases.

With regard to the question of the petitions submitted to the Mandates Commission by petitioners in Palestine the Council, the resolution further says, approves the conclusions of the Commission and instructs the Secretary General to bring them to the knowledge of the Mandatory Power and of the petitioner concerned in each case.

Plans for a $1,000,000 building addition to adjoin the present synagogue of the Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, 88th Street and West End Avenue, were announced by Rabbi Israel Goldstein in his address on Yom Kippur eve.

The purchase of the site for the new addition, consisting of five lots on 89th Street between West End Avenue and Broadway, has been completed by Mr. Charles W. Endel, President of the Congregation. The acquired property is immediately contiguous to the rear of the present Temple edifice, and gives the Congregation a plot running through from 88th Street to 89th Street.

There will be erected an eight-story Community House, which is to include a large auditorium, a chapel, classrooms, social rooms, and in addition to all these, an extension to the Synagogue, adding more than 700 seats to its present capacity, will be built. The new accommodations will give the Synagogue the largest seating capacity on the West Side.

The cost of the building additions including the Synagogue extension and the Community House, will be approximately $1,000,000, including the cost of the land. The work is to be completed by next September. The architects are Henry B. Hertz, Jr., and Louis A. Abramson.