5 Dec. 45

is by no means an uninteresting aspect of the breaches which I shall put before the Tribunal.

The first treaty to be dealt with is the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, signed at The Hague on the 29th of July 1899. 1 ask that the Tribunal take judicial notice of the Convention, and for convenience I hand in as Exhibit GB-1 the British Document TC-1. The German reference is to the Reichsgesetzblatt for 1901, Number 44, Sections 401 to 404, and 482 and 483. The Tribunal will find the relevant charge in Appendix C as Charge 1.

As the Attorney General said yesterday, these Hague Conventions are only the first gropings towards the rejection of the inevitability of war. They do not render the making of aggressive war a crime, but their milder terms were as readily broken as the more severe agreements.

On 19 July 1899, Germany, Greece, Serbia, and 25 other nations signed a convention. Germany ratified the convention on 4 September 1900, Serbia on 11 May 1901, and Greece on 4 April 1901.

By Article 12 of the treaty between the Principal Allied and Associated Powers and the Serb-Croat-Slovene State, signed at the St. Germaine-en-Laye on 10 September 1919, the new Kingdom succeeded to all the old Serbian treaties, and later, as the Tribunal knows, changed its name to Yugoslavia.

I think it is sufficient, unless the Tribunal wish otherwise, for me to read the first two articles only:

"Article 1: With a view to obviating as far as possible recourse to force in the relations between states, the signatory powers agree to use their best efforts to insure the pacific settlement of international differences.

"Article 2: In case of serious disagreement or conflict, before an appeal to arms the signatory powers agree to have recourse, as far as circumstances allow, to the good offices or mediation of one or more friendly powers."
After that the Convention deals with machinery, and I don't think, subject to any wish of the Tribunal, that it is necessary for me to deal with it in detail.

The second treaty is the Convention for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, signed at The Hague on the 18th of October 1907. Again I ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of this, and for convenience I hand in as Exhibit GB-2 the Final Act of the Conference at The Hague, which contains British Documents TC-2, 3, and 4. The reference to this Convention in German is to the Reichsgesetzblatt for 1910, Number 52, Sections 22 to 25; and the relevant charge is Charge 2.