Mandates and Minorities at Meeting of Institute of International Law.

Of the subjects discussed this year two were of special actuality in connexion with the problems of Geneva, Sir John Fischer Williams, K.C., the British Legal Representative on the Reparations Commission under the Treaty of Versailles, writes in an article on the 37th meeting of the Institute of International Law which has just been concluded at Cambridge, which appears today in the “Times”. The Institute, he points out in passing, numbers among its members the greater part of the most distinguished international lawyers of the day, including Presidents and Judges of the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague.

The Institute, he proceeds, approved a series of propositions relating to Mandates — propositions which, it may be modestly hoped, will be of some value to students and practitioners of this very special institution of the League of Nations. Approval to these propositions was given by 36 votes, as against 15 abstentions, the general tendency of the resolutions being to emphasise the importance of the control of the League.

On the question of the rights of minorities instituted by or through the treaties of 1919, he adds, an interesting debate brought into relief the contrast, it would be too much to say opposition, between the young countries who have undertaken by treaty special duties towards minorities and the older countries not disposed to welcome that particular application of the principle — if principle there be — of the equality of States, which would result in the creation and international protection of minorities in their own dominions. But the contrast was not forced to any extremity, the difficulty of the subject was recognised on all sides, and in the end the matter was adjourned for further consideration at a later meeting.