This procedure provides machinery within the framework of the treaties, enabling minorities to appeal to the League by means of petitions, and it also ensures consideration of these petitions by a suitable body.
The treaties merely refer to the duty incumbent upon members of the Council of seeing that the clauses provided for the benefit of minorities are duly observed, but the members of the Council realized, even at their very first meetings, that, however desirous they might be of observing the spirit of the minorities treaties, they would find it very difficult in practice to keep themselves directly informed as to how these treaties were being applied. Moreover, it was in some ways undesirable that minorities should apply direct to members of the Council individually; appeals of this kind would have the same disadvantages as the old system of protection of minorities by the intervention of the Great, Powers which the League of Nations guarantee had been specifi cally intended to obviate. The direct appeal of minorities to a foreign power would have the further disadvantage that it might be interpreted by the Government under which the minorities were placed as an act of disloyalty on their part. It was in order to obviate these difficulties that the Council of the League estab lished its procedure for minorities as the best method of render 'The report submitted by the Sixth committee to the Third Assembly (1922) mentions an observation by Prof. Gilbert Murray (South Africa) to the effect that in certain localities of mixed population, where conflicts were frequent and serious, order had frequently been main tained and tranquillity restored by the mere presence of consuls or other representatives of foreign Governments who could impartially report on events and bring to bear the influence of a wider public opinion. Prof. Gilbert Murray also observed that cases might arise in which the presence of such a representative of the League might have an even more beneficent effect, in view of the disinterestedness and the moral prestige possessed by the League, and suggested that the Council might well consider the desirability in suitable cases of employing such repre sentatives, with the consent of the Government concerned, to allay public excitement and gradually restore tranquillity in disturbed dis tricts. The Committee felt the force of these observations and placed them on record, but, considering the variety of possible contingencies and the wide discretion in the hands of the Council for meeting them, thought best not to embody the proposals in a definite resolution.
ing effective the protection guaranteed to minorities by the League.
The Council was also anxious to give minorities a guarantee that their petitions would receive serious consideration; hence the institution of the "Minorities Committee." The system of procedure as it exists to-day was not established all at once; it is the outcome of long experience and a series of adaptations. It is to be found in a number of Council resolutions which supplement or rectify each other, namely the report of the Italian representative and the Council resolutions of Oct. 22 and 25, 1920, and the resolutions of June 27, 1921, Sept. 5, 1923, and June 1o, 1925.
The basic idea underlying the procedure thus instituted is that petitions are intended purely for purposes of information. The Council has carefully eliminated anything that might lead to procedure in which the respective cases of the minority and of the Government concerned would be heard as if they were two parties to a lawsuit, because it considered that such a situation was incompatible with the ideas and principles underlying the present organization of States.
Accordingly the secretary-general in principle merely acknowl edges the receipt of a petition, and does not keep the petitioner informed as to what is done with it. (On this subject see the memorandum of the secretary-general, approved by the Council on June Io, 1926 [Official Journal, July, 1926, pp. 878 and 986].) The position of the petitioner in this procedure has frequently given rise to controversy. Reference may be made, for instance, to the speech of the Hungarian representative, Count Apponyi, at the Sixth session of the Assembly (Sept. 14, 1925). On that occasion Count Apponyi expressed himself definitely in favour of a procedure in which both parties, and therefore the repre sentatives of the petitioners, would have an opportunity of pre senting their case. In reply to this, M. de Mello Franco (Brazil) said in his personal statement to the Council dated on Dec. 9, 1925, that in his opinion such a conception "would give rise to dangers which would threaten the moral ends towards which the system of protection instituted by the minorities treaties is tending." An analysis is given below of the various Council resolutions laying down the procedure for minorities' petitions (Resolutions of Oct. 22 and 25, 192o, June 27, 1921, Sept. 5, 1923, June 1o, 1925).