of maintaining continuous contact with 48 different and distant States. Its work was none the less carried out in a spirit of devotion and with a degree of economy which earned the high approbation of a special Committee of Inquiry appointed by the Assembly.
The provisions of the Covenant with reference to disputes (Articles 11-17) had not yet been] put into application sufficiently for a conclusive opinion to be formed on them. But there was sufficient experience of their working to make it fair to claim that they are based on sound principles.
The Articles relating to the legal settlement of disputes had hardly as yet been tested. The plan laid down in Article 14 for the creation of the Court worked well. It is worthy of special note that nine States had by the middle of 1921 already agreed to give the Court obligatory jurisdiction in all juridical disputes which might arise between them.
Apart from this, one legal question was solved in 1921 by the League, which would have been referred to the Court had it been in existence. This was the question of the competence of the League to deal with the Aland Is. dispute. Finland claimed that the islands lay entirely within its sovereignty, and that therefore the League could not deal with the matter. As there was no Court, the Council referred this contention to a Com- mission of three eminent international lawyers, a Frenchman, a Dutchman and a Swiss. This Commission made an elaborate report and produced so great a body of convincing legal argu- ment in support of the League's competence that their decision was never for one moment questioned even by Finland, against whom it went. It was a good demonstration of the value of judicial methods; and it indicates the great authority which the International Court may be expected to wield.
The provisions of the Covenant for the settlement of disputes by political methods (Article 15) had more extensive trial. Three disputes of first-rate importance had been dealt with by the League by Aug. 1921 the Aland Is. dispute, between Finland and Sweden; the Vilna dispute, between Poland and Lithuania; and the Albanian frontier dispute, between Albania, Serbia and Greece. Of these the first in date and importance was that of the Aland Is. It was laid before the League in the month of June 1920, at a moment when there was great tension between the parties tension which in the opimon of a good many competent judges was very likely to result in war. The Council's conduct of the matter afforded an illustration of the working of almost every provision in the Covenant that relates to the settlement of disputes. To begin with, the matter was brought to the League by the action of a third party Great Britain under the terms of Article n; no better example could be wished for of the value of this Article. Next, the question of the legal competence of the League was referred by the Council, under Article 14, for an advisory opinion to a Commission of jurists representing the International Court. Next the Council appointed a political Commission of persons of high international authority, and of impeachable impartiality, to investigate the contentions of the parties and the merits of the dispute. This Commission spent several months on its inquiries, and passed a long time among the Aland Islanders themselves. As a result, they produced a remarkable report, against parts of which the Swedish Government strongly protested, but which nevertheless was recognized by public opinion as a fair and statesmanlike presentation of the facts and merits of the problem, and as a wide and practicable proposal for its solution. This report was published for the examination of the world at large as soon as it was laid before the Council. The matter was finally dealt with by the Council at its i3th session. The substance of the Commis- sion's report was adopted as the Council's decision, and this in turn was accepted by all the parties. The Aland Islanders, whose representatives were themselves heard by the Council, secured guarantees from Finland amounting almost to autonomy, while the Swedish-speaking population of Finland secured protec- tion, which, without the intervention of the League, they would not have done. Thus a very probable war was averted, and a path to friendly cooperation between close neighbours was
opened. Such was the result of the full application of the new methods of delay, publicity and impartial investigation which the Covenant provides.
The history of the Council's conduct of the Vilna dispute between Poland and Lithuania is less satisfactory. The matter was rendered far more difficult from the start by the fact that, immediately it was referred to the League, the Polish forces of Gen. Zeligowski executed a coup de force and occupied the area in dispute. The Polish Government repudiated Gen. Zeligowski, but have since tacitly admitted their responsibility for his actions. There are provisions in the Covenant which might have been applied to induce Poland to remove Zeligowski's forces from the territory he had unlawfully invaded. These provisions were not applied. Moreover, had greater publicity been given to the conduct of the dispute by the Council in its early stages, the parties would have found it difficult to maintain their unreason- able, and on some points unjustifiable, course of action. But, in spite of these difficulties and mistakes, the Council neverthe- less succeeded in preventing the outbreak of war. If even induced the parties to continue direct negotiations under the presidency of a distinguished member of the Council. It unani- mously adopted recommendations at its i3th session, which, if the parties accepted them, seemed likely to lead to the settle- ment of the dispute by methods of peaceful negotiation and not by force of arms. Thus, even when the Council fails to avail itself of its full powers under the Covenant, it may still, as a result of the moral authority which it possesses, achieve very important results.
With regard to the promotion of international cooperation (Articles 8 and 9, 23, 24 and 25 of the Covenant) the League had done perhaps the most convincing and successful work of its early history. Reference may be made to the principal activities it engaged in. . The first was the Brussels Financial Conference of 1920, which resulted in the formation of economic and financial Advisory Committees, and the preparation of a scheme for the financial and economic rehabilitation of Austria. The next was the Transit Conference, held at Barcelona in the spring of 1921, which drew up a number of conventions and recommendations on transit by sea, by river and by railway. The work of this Conference was prepared in the greatest detail by a League Committee, acting under the authority of the Coun- cil, and the results which it achieved, including the establish- ment of a Transit Committee, on which 14 different countries were represented, were of an encouraging kind. Another Con- ference, on the regulation of the white slave traffic, was held in June 1921, and was attended by a far greater number of States than any other similar Conference before, and achieved results of great importance which were shortly to be embodied in the form of a convention. With regard to the allied subject of opium, the Assembly appointed a Committee which has begun its work for the supervision of the traffic in drugs in a systematic way, on the basis of which a machinery of supervision and control will in due time be worked out.
In another order of ideas, the League acted as the coordinat- ing centre of international action in various matters in which such action could not have been achieved except through the League and its Secretariat. As an example may be cited the repatriation of prisoners-of-war already referred to. Another was the campaign against typhus in central Europe, carried out by means of a central fund raised by members of the League and administered under the authority of an Epidemics Commis- sion appointed by the Council. Such administrative interna- tional action is unique in the history of international relations, and there seems no reason why it should not be extended advan- tageously in the future.
There is one other matter which should be mentioned in con- nexion with this aspect of the League's work the protection of racial and religious minorities. A great number of treaties have been signed in the last 70 years or so, in which provision has been made, and solemn obligations undertaken, for the protection of such minorities, particularly in central and south-eastern Europe. It is unfortunately true that these treaties have been
