It is the secretary-general who has to decide whether a petition can be accepted or not. The Government to which the petition refers may, however, object to this decision, in which case the question must be submitted to the acting President of the Council, who may appoint two other members of the Council to assist him in the consideration of the matter. Lastly, if the State concerned so requests, this question of procedure may be placed on the Council's agenda (Council resolution of Sept. 5, 1923).
The conditions which a petition must fulfill in order to be accepted were laid down by the Council in its resolution of Sept. 5, 1923. They are as follows: I. Origin of the Petition.—The only condition required is that the petition must not emanate from an anonymous or unauthenti cated source.
2. Form of Petitions.—Petitions must not be worded in violent language.
3. Contents of Petitions.—As regards their contents petitions (a) must have in view the protection of minorities in accordance with the treaties; (b) in particular, must not be submitted in the form of a request for the severance of political relations between the minority in question and the State of which it forms a part and (c) must contain information or refer to facts which have not recently been the subject of a petition submitted to the ordinary procedure.
Preliminary Communication of Petitions to the Govern ment Concerned.—Originally (see report of M. Tittoni, Oct. 22, 192o) the if he considered that a petition could be accepted, used to communicate it without comment to the Members of the Council for information.
The State concerned, if a Member of the League, was informed simultaneously with the Council as to the subject of the petition, it being a rule that every document communicated to the Mem bers of the Council for information is communicated immediately to all Members of the League. In this way the State concerned
had an opportunity of submitting to the Members of the Council such observations as it thought desirable to make.
Certain Governments, however, raised objections to this prac tice and proposed amendments to the procedure. On the basis of their proposals, the Council, by its resolution of June 27, 1921, modified the procedure so that all petitions concerning the protection of minorities, under the provisions of the treaties, from petitioners other than Members of the League, were com municated to the State concerned before being brought to the notice of the Members of the League. That State had a time limit of three weeks within which to inform the secretariat whether it intended to make any comments or not. If its reply were in the affirmative, it had a total period of two months in which to sub mit its observations, which would be communicated, together with the petition, to the members of the council and to the Members of the League.
This procedure is still in force for the preliminary communi cation of petitions to the Governments concerned, but, as will be seen later, it has been modified as regards the communication of petitions to all the Members of the League.
There are, however, two exceptions to the above-mentioned rule. In both cases the petition is not communicated in advance to the Government concerned but is sent simultaneously to that Government and to the Members of the Council. The first of these exceptions refers to "exceptional and extremely cases. In such cases the Secretary-General, before communi cating the petition to the Members of the Council, need only in form the representative of the State concerned accredited to the League secretariat. The question whether a case is of an excep tional nature or extremely urgent is left to the discretion of the Secretary-General. The second exception refers to petitions from a Government which is a Member of the League. As it was decided to communicate petitions in advance to the Govern ment concerned only in the case of petitions petitioners other than Members of the it must be assumed that the original procedure remains in force as far as Members them selves are concerned.