This committee was formed essentially in the interest of the minorities themselves, in order to enable them to appeal direct to the League. On this subject the Supplementary Report (A. 7. [a] 1925, p. 2o) to the Sixth Assembly on the work of the Council contains the following passage: the creation of the Minorities Committee) the Council has . . . placed at the dis posal of the minorities a special body which enables them to state their claims without infringing in any way either the letter or spirit of the Treaties." (a) Composition of the Committee.—A minorities committee 'This question was dealt with by the Polish and Czechoslovak Gov ernments, by the former in its notes of Jan. 16 and Aug. 22, 1923, and by the latter in its note of April 5, 1923. These notes were summarized in the report submitted to the Council on Sept. 5, 1923, by M. de Rio Branco (Brazil). (See Official Journal, Nov. 1923, p. 1426.) 'Paragraph v. reads as follows: "The secretariat of the League which has the duty of collecting information concerning the manner in which the Minorities Treaties are carried out should not only assist the Coun cil in the study of complaints concerning infractions of these treaties, but should also assist the Council in ascertaining in what manner the persons belonging to racial, linguistic or religious minorities fulfil their duties towards their States. The information thus collected might be placed at the disposal of the States Members of the League of Nations if they so desire." all matters relating to the Minorities Committee see Supple mentary Report to the Sixth Committee on the work of the Council and of the secretariat (A. 7 [a] 1925, pp. 17-20).
is formed to deal with each petition. Until June i o, 1925, these minorities committees were composed of the acting President of the Council at the time when the petition and the observations of the Government concerned were circulated to the members of the Council, and two other members chosen by the Presi dent from among any of his colleagues. On June 1 o, 1925, the Council adopted a resolution confirming, as regards the composi tion of these committees, certain rules which were already ap plied in practice and were designed to ensure that the committees would be independent and impartial. According to this Council resolution the members of a minorities committee cannot include either the representative of the State to which the persons belong ing to the minority in question are subject, or the representative of a neighbouring State or of a State a majority of whose popu lation belong from the ethnical point of view to the same people as the persons who are members of the minority in question. If the acting President of the Council himself comes under any of these three categories, recourse will be had to the member of the Council who was president before him and who is not in the same position.
(b) The Committee's Method of W ork.—The above-mentioned Supplementary Report to the Sixth Assembly gives the following particulars as regards the working of the minorities committee : "After the communication of the petition to the Council, with the observations, if any, of the interested Government, the director of the minorities section addresses a letter, accompanied by a copy of the document in question, to the acting president of the Council, reminding him that it is his duty to appoint two of his colleagues in order to pro ceed without delay to an examination of the document. As soon as the president has sent his reply, the director of the minorities section gets into touch with the two other members of the Council.
"The minorities section, in some cases in collaboration with the legal section, prepares for the use of the three members of the committee a written statement on the questions of fict and law raised by the obser vations of the interested Government. Further, the minorities section is
at the disposal of the members of the Committee and of the members of the Council to procure for them any supplementary information which they may wish to receive.
"The meetings of the minorities committee, or more correctly of the various minorities committees, which are simultaneously at work, gen erally take place during the sessions of the Council. Of late, some meetings have also taken place between the sessions of the Council owing to the difficulty of finding in all cases during the sessions of the Council the time necessary for the discussion of these matters, which are sometimes extremely detailed and prolonged, and which always have a delicate side to them and require the most conscientious prepara tion both by the secretariat and by the members of the Council. "The examination of a case by the minorities committee is not, of course, restricted to the formal meetings of the committee. It is the duty of each member of the committee, as well as of the secretariat, to proceed to this examination without delay after the communication to the Council of the document relating to the case. The secretariat begins an examination of the case without waiting for the distribution of this document. The discussion is accordingly, from the first meeting of the three members of the committee, except perhaps in cases of extreme urgency, based on a very considerable amount of preparatory work. "The meetings of the committee are held in private, and no formal minutes are kept. Each committee is free to adopt its own procedure. "It results from the object of the work undertaken by a minorities committee that its members are free to form the best opinion they can of all the factors in the case which they are asked to examine. They may take into consideration the greater or less importance of the case, and its more or less general significance. They may take into account the attitude more or less conciliatory of the interested Government towards the requests of the minority as well as the attitude more or less loyal of the persons belonging to the minority. They may form the opinion, in a particular case, that the petitioner should have resorted to the administrative or judicial authorities of the country before addressing the League of Nations. In the minorities committees all these factors are continually discussed and taken into consideration. "The members of the committee may, moreover, enter into corre spondence with the interested Government with a view to removing doubts or misunderstandings or making friendly suggestions to the Government to induce it to modify its attitude on a point which, failing such a solution, would appear to the members of the committee to be a case which should be brought to the attention of the Council. Before deciding whether it should or should not draw the attention of the Council to a matter which is the subject of a petition the members of a committee have in many cases asked the interested Government for supplementary information either in general terms or by putting defi nite questions. In some cases, such requests have been accompanied by other suggestions, as, for example, that the interested Government should postpone taking any steps which might have the effect of creat ing a fait accompli before the committee was in a position to take a decision on the question of substance.