5
Dec. 45
with
it and read the appropriate parts — if the
Tribunal will be good enough to note it because
it is mentioned in Charge 9 of Appendix C. It is
the Arbitration Convention between Germany and
Belgium also done at Locarno, of which I hand in
a copy for convenience as GB-15. In fact, I can
tell the Tribunal all these arbitration
conventions are in the same form, and I am not
going to deal with it because it is essentially
part of the case concerned with Belgium, the Low
Countries, and Luxembourg, which my friend, Mr.
Roberts, will present. Therefore, I only ask the
Tribunal to accept the formal document for the
moment. And the same applies to the tenth
treaty, which is mentioned in Charge 10 of
Appendix C. That is the Arbitration Treaty
between Germany and Poland, of which I ask the
Tribunal to take notice, and I hand in as GB-16.
That again will be dealt with by my friend,
Colonel Griffith-Jones, when he is dealing with
the Polish case.
I therefore can take
the Tribunal straight to a matter which is not a
treaty, but is a solemn declaration, and that is
TC-18, which I now put in as Exhibit GB-17, and
ask the Tribunal to take judicial notice of, as
a Declaration of the Assembly of the League of
Nations. The importance is the date which was
the 24th of September 1927. The Tribunal may
remember that I asked them to take judicial
notice of the fact that Germany had become a
member of the League of Nations on 10 September
1926, a year before.
The importance of
this Declaration is not only its effect in
international law, to which my learned friend,
the Attorney General, referred, but the fact
that it was unanimously adopted by the Assembly
of the League, of which Germany was a free, and
let me say at once, an active member at the
time. I think that all I need read of TC-18 is,
if the Tribunal would be good enough to look at
it, the speech which begins "M. Sokal of
Poland (Rapporteur)," and then the
translation after the Rapporteur had dealt with
the formalities, that this had gone to the third
committee and been unanimously adopted, and he
had been asked to act as Rapporteur, he says —
the second paragraph:
"The
committee was of opinion that, at the
present juncture, a solemn resolution
passed by the Assembly, declaring that
wars of aggression must never be
employed as a means of settling disputes
between states, and that such wars
constitute an international crime, would
have a salutary effect on public
opinion, and would help to create an
atmosphere favorable to the League's
future work in the matter of security
and disarmament.
"While
recognizing that the draft resolution
does not constitute a regular legal
instrument, which would be adequate in
itself and represent a concrete
contribution towards