5 Dec. 45

At Locarno, Germany negotiated five treaties:

(A) The Treaty of Mutual Guarantee between Germany, Belgium, France, Great Britain, and Italy; (B) the Arbitration Convention between Germany and France; (C) the Arbitration Convention between Germany and Belgium; (D) the Arbitration Treaty between Germany and Poland; and (E) an Arbitration Treaty between Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Article 10 of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee provided that it should come into force as soon as ratifications were deposited at Geneva, in the archives of the League of Nations, and as soon as Germany became a member of the League of Nations. The ratifications were deposited on the 14th September 1926 and Germany became a member of the League of Nations on the 10th of September 1926.

The two arbitration conventions and the two arbitration treaties which I mentioned provide that they shall enter into force under the same conditions as the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee. That is Article 21 of the Arbitration Conventions and Article 22 of the Arbitration Treaties.

The most important of the five agreements is the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee. One of its purposes was to establish in perpetuity the borders between Germany and Belgium, and Germany and France. It contains no provision for denunciation or withdrawal therefrom and provides that it shall remain in force until the Council of the League of Nations decides that the League of Nations ensures sufficient protection to the parties to the treaty — an event which never happened — in which case the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee shall expire 1 year later.

The general scheme of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee is that Article 1 provides that the parties guarantee three things:

The border between Germany and France, the border between Germany and Belgium, and the demilitarization of the Rhineland.

Article 2 provides that Germany and France, and Germany and Belgium, agree that they will not attack or invade each other with certain inapplicable exceptions, and Article 3 provides that Germany and France, and Germany and Belgium, agree to settle all disputes between them by peaceful means.

The Tribunal will remember, because this point was made by my friend, Mr. Alderman, that the first important violation of the Treaty of Mutual Guarantee appears to have been the entry of German troops into the Rhineland on 7 March 1936. The day after, France and Belgium asked the League of Nations Council to consider the question of the German re-occupation of the Rhineland and the purported repudiation of the treaty, and on the 12th of March, after a protest from the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Belgium,