5
Dec. 45
a
request by one or other of the High Contracting
Parties notified to the other signatory powers 3
months in advance, and voting at least by a
two-thirds majority, decides that the League of
Nations ensures sufficient protection to the
High Contracting Parties; the treaty shall cease
to have effect on the expiration of a period of
1 year from such decision." That is, that
in signing this treaty, the German
representatives clearly placed the question of
repudiation or avoidance of the treaty in hands
other than their own. They were at the time, of
course, a member of the League, and a member of
the Council of the League, but they left the
repudiation and avoidance to the decision of the
League.
Then the next treaty on my
list is the Arbitration Treaty between Germany
and Czechoslovakia, which was one of the Locarno
group and to which I have already referred, but
for convenience I have put in Exhibit GB-14,
which is British Document TC-14. As a breach of
this treaty, as charged in Charge 8, of
Appendix C, I mentioned the background of the
treaty, and I shall not go into it again but I
think the only clauses that the Tribunal need
look at, are Article 1, which is the governing
clause, and says as follows (Document TC-14):
"All
disputes of every kind between Germany
and Czechoslovakia with regard to which
the parties are in conflict as to their
respective rights, and which it may not
be possible to settle amicably by the
normal methods of diplomacy, shall be
submitted for decision either to an
arbitral tribunal, or to the Permanent
Court of International Justice as laid
down hereafter. It is agreed that the
disputes referred to above include, in
particular, those mentioned in Article
13 of the Covenant of the League of
Nations.
"This provision
does not apply to disputes arising out
of events prior to the present treaty
and belonging to the past.
Disputes
for the settlement of which a special
procedure is, laid down in other
conventions in force between the High
Contracting Parties, shall be settled in
conformity with the provisions of these
conventions."
Articles
2 to 21 of the machinery. In Article 22 the
second sentence says it — that's the
present treaty — shall enter into and
remain in force under the same conditions as the
said treaty, which is the Treaty of Mutual
Guarantee.
Now that, I think, is all I
need mention about that treaty. I think I am
right that my friend, Mr. Alderman, referred to
it. It is certainly the treaty to which
President Benes unsuccessfully appealed during
the crisis in the autumn of 1938. Now the ninth
treaty which I should deal with is not in this
document book, and I merely am putting it in
formally, because my friend, Mr. Roberts, will
deal