HL Deb 15 June 1921 vol 45 cc587-96

Lord PHILLIMORErose to ask—

1. Whether considering the importance of the elections to the Permanent Court of International Justice being made when the Assembly of the League of Nations meets in September they will consider the propriety of using their good offices to induce the other States, parties to the League who have not yet ratified the Statute constituting the Court, to do so in good time.

2. Whether, having regard to Articles 4 and 5 of the Statute, and the request which has been addressed by the Secretary-General of the League to the members of the Court of Arbitral ion at the Hague, His Majesty's Government has considered the question of filling up the four places on the Court which are accorded to the British Empire, so that the nominations for Judges which may be made on behalf of the British Empire may have their full weight when tin? election comes on.

The noble and learned Lord said: The Statute forming the Permanent Court of International Justice was unanimously adopted by the Assembly at its last meeting in December, 1920. The resolution stated that the Assembly unanimously declared its approval of the Draft Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice, as amended by the Assembly, which was prepared by the Council under Article 14 of the Covenant and submitted to the Assembly for its approval. In view of the wording of Article 14, it was resolved that the Statute of the Court should be submitted within the shortest possible time to the members of the League of Nations for adoption in the form of a protocol, duly ratified, and declaring their recognition of the Court. It was declared to be the duty of the Council to submit the Statute to the members. Now comes the important clause — As soon as this protocol has been ratified by the majority of members of the League of Nations, the Statute of the Court shall come into force, and the Court will be called upon to sit. A certain number of States signed at once. The report given to the Council by the Secretariat on February 25 was that twenty-seven members had up to that time signed.

The monthly summary published by the League of Nations says that three more have signed the protocol, and two are expected to sign immediately. So far so good; we have got as far as thirty or thirty-two of the forty-three or forty-four States which constitute the members of the League. The difficulty is in the ratification. Sweden ratified within a week, I think. Since then, only two more Stares had ratified when the monthly organ was published. It was said that two more were expected to do so. Your Lordships will see that that accounts for but live States out of forty-three. The difficulty is that, if you do not get a sufficient number of ratifications, the Assembly will not be able to elect at its meeting in September, and the consequence will be that the formation of the Court will be, thrown over for a year. I cannot conceive why that should happen. It was unanimously Toted that this was a right course: it was unanimously felt that the Court ought to be ready to function. The humorous thing is that on March 3 the Council, in pursuance of its duty, sent out an urgent request to the States that they should ratify, and I believe that at that moment no single member of the Council had itself ratified.

My noble and learned friend Lord Weardale put a Question to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs recently, and elicited from him that as regards Great Britain it was desired to have one ratification by the King in respect of Great Britain and all the Dominions. I feel the force of that, and, if that is to follow in a very few days, no doubt it will be a very great advantage. But, in the meantime, the difficulty is to get a sufficient number of ratifications before September, and the information "which I get, both from the Secretariat at Geneva and from friends of mine in Holland, is that what is wanted is that Great Britain should take this step, and that, as soon as she does, there is a probability that a great number of the smaller nations will follow her lead. I am aware that some of the nations consider that it will be necessary to have an Act of their Parliament to enable them to ratify. I believe that at this moment, in Holland, such an Act is going through, and I understand that, in Norway and in other countries something of the same kind is taking place. Some countries do not need, or do not think that they need, such an Act. But whether they need it or whether they do not, time is slipping by, and slipping by with the most terrible rapidity.

Unfortunately, a further difficulty arises. The Council thought itself warranted in instructing the Secretariat to send out provisionally to the various countries requests for nominations. That, no doubt, can be done, and I apprehend that it is being done. But I wish to ask whether the Judges can be elected provisionally, or must one wait until the Statute ha? been affirmed. I should have thought that it might be possible for the Judges to be elected provisionally, but the noble Earl, in his reply to Lord Weardale, said this: The noble Lord is quite right in his statement of the position. Article 5 does provide that at least three months before the date of the election the Secretary-General of the League of Nations shall request the members of the Hague Court of Arbitration, belonging to the Stales which are members of the League, to undertake the nomination of persons in a position to accept the duties of a member of the Permanent Court; and, accordingly, it does follow that unless the Statute is ratified by June 5— a date which is unfortunately now passed — the Council and Assembly will not be able to elect the Judges in the manner prescribed by the meeting of the Assembly at Geneva on September 5. There may be some virtue in the words "in the manner prescribed." I trust that the view will not be taken that it will not be possible to elect these Judges in September.

I may state to your Lordships that one of the Articles of the Statute contemplates the regular meeting of the Judges on June 15. If the Judges are not elected in September of this year it will not be possible for the Court to be sitting in June, 1922, and, if the Judges are not to be elected till September, 1922, we shall not have this Court sitting until June, 1923. I really do not know why, after the hot fit which led the Assembly to pass that unanimous vote, the cold fit has set in, and why there has been this great delay in procuring ratification. But I think and trust that it is not yet too late, and the object of my first Question is to put before His Majesty's Government the request that all the influence of Great Britain and all her example (which is, after all, better than precept) should be used in favour of obtaining these ratifications as soon as possible, and also that the view should not be taken that it will not be possible to elect the Judges in September, even if a sufficient number of ratifications had not come in by that date. Why any country should first agree, and then make a delay about ratification, passes my humble comprehension.

I have a second question as to which I have only a very few words to say. It is necessary that I should just draw your Lordships' attention to one Article of the Statute. In Article 4 it is provided that members of the Court should be elected by the Assembly and by the Council from a list of persons nominated by' the national groups in the Courts of Arbitration—that is the Court organised by th Conventions of The Hague of 1899 and 1907. The view which was taken by the Committee of Jurists (of which I was a member) and which has been accepted by the Council and by the Assembly, was that it would be better that the nominations of Judges should not come direct from the political organs of the States, but from their representatives upon The Hague Tribunal. The idea might have been a little fanciful, but at any rate it has commended itself.

When this matter came under discussion I sent for the list of members of The Hague Tribunal, and I found that at that time Great Britain had not a single representative. The noble Earl, Lord Desart, came, to me this evening, and said: "I thought I was a representative," and somebody else was mentioned. I said: "I daresay you were, but all appointments were for a period of years, and I was told at The Hague that all the British ones had expired by effluxion of time.'' Great Britain, I think, was the only country in that position. Four representatives are supposed to be given to each State. Some have three, some two, some one. I am not sure whether any had four, but I believe that Great Britain was the only country at that moment without any.

I ventured to communicate with the Foreign Office, with the result that His Majesty appointed my noble and learned friend, Viscount Finlay, than whom I am sure no better appointment could be made, to be one of the four. But I was told at the time that it was desired to reserve the other places, and I see that in an answer made by Mr. Chamberlain in the House of Commons yesterday, it was stated that the Court might still sometimes sit, and it was desired to reserve those places for Judges from the Dominions. I fully appreciate the position, although it will be a change, because Lord Desart was one of the old four, and Sir Edward Fry another; but I venture still to hope, for reasons that I will give, that the Government will fill up the vacancies at once. The Judges are to come from each of these groups. There will be keen competition among the various nations to have their people put upon the Court, and in the competition, there not being room for all, much will depend on the personal character, if known, of the individual candidates, and where it is not known, or even where it is known, upon the character of those who recommend the candidates; and, great as is the authority and reputation of my noble friend, Lord Finlay, I cannot help thinking that it will be a matter of some astonishment to foreign nations if the British nominators do not number their full number. We are entitled to nominate four candidates. It is not, I suppose, intended that they should all be from Great Britain, or the Dominions, and I suppose it is quite possible to recommend great people all over the world. We might nominate a member from the United States, and I hope that we may nominate another gentleman, whom I will not mention by name. If, however, the British nominations stand in the name of one, and all the other countries fill up nominations in the names of four, I greatly fear that our nominations will not have the same weight as if they were filled up in the names of four. I have, therefore, put my second Question on the Paper.

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTOX)

My Lords, this is not the first time on which my noble and learned friend has called the attention of the House to the institution of this Court of International Justice. It is a body in the inception of which he himself bore a very honourable part, and in the progress of which to maturity he is entitled to take, as he does, very strong interest. He is anxious that nothing should occur to prevent this body from coming into being at the earliest possible date, and he has complained, in the first part of his remarks, of the apparent inertia, or remissness, which he finds himself unable to understand, both of the States who are concerned in the institution of this Court and of the League of Nations itself in carrying it through its preliminary stages. The remedy he suggests, in the first part of his Question, is that His Majesty's Government should use their good offices to induce the other States, parties to the League, who have not yet ratified the Statute constituting the Court to do so in good time.

I doubt very much whether it would be wise, or whether it is part of the duty, of this Government, or of any individual Government, to take action in that sense. I think it might be open to serious misconstruction. I doubt very much whether we should welcome action of that sort being taken by another Power, and, indeed, whatever Power contemplated acting in such a manner might be held guilty of usurping what arc obviously the functions of the Council of the League of Nations itself. And not only do those functions belong to it, but they are already being exercised by it. The Secretary-General of the League— I think the noble and learned Lord referred to this—has already acted in the sense in which the noble Lord now desires His Majesty's Government to act also. In February the Secretary-General issued an appeal to all members of the League to deposit the requisite number of ratifications before August, and if we are now to take similar action it suggests at once that the authority of the Secretary-General of the League is inadequate, or that people pay no attention to his requests. I do not myself share the apprehensions of the noble and learned Lord as to what is going to take place.

Not only has the Secretary-General acted in the manner I have described, but he was also authorised by another Resolution of the Council to take the necessary steps, on or after May I, for obtaining additional nominations of candidates if the Court constituted had not been ratified by the majority of the members of the League by that date. Under that power he has invited those States not represented on the Hague Court of Arbitration to nominate their national groups—that is, those already existing by virtue of membership of the Hague Court of Arbitration and those specially created for the purpose —to send him by August 1 the names of their candidates forelection by the Assembly and Council of the League in September. It will be seen then that members who intend to ratify have a period up to the end of July to do so, and from such information as I possess I do not doubt that the necessary number of ratifications will have been deposited by that date. I told the noble and learned Lord, or Lord Weardale, on an earlier occasion, that we attach importance, as he, does, to the matter, and any influence I can exercise upon our Dominions in hurrying on their progress, he may rely upon me to exercise. As regards doing more, I do not think, in the I first place, that it is necessary, and, in the second place, it would ho rather transcending the powers which we have a right to exercise.

With regard to the second point— namely, the numbers of the Hague Court of Arbitration—the noble, and learned Lord is aware of the fact that although there was a period in which we were unrepresented upon the Court, we have since been fortunate enough to secure the services of Lord Finlay, who is, at the present moment, the sole British member of the Court. The question whether we should fill up, in the manner prescribed by the Statute, the remaining places, is one which has been carefully considered. I had forgotten, till the noble and learned Lord reminded me, that an answer upon the question was given yesterday in another place, and that is the answer which in substance I was prepared to give to-day.

We had considered whether it was desirable, with a view to providing candidates for the new Court to be set up, to fill the places, and we decided not to do so, for the reasons given by Mr. Chamberlain in the House of Commons. They are these. The Dominions are not separate members of the Hague Court, as they will be of the new Court. What we thought was that if any question is referred to the Hague Court which concerns one or more of the Dominions, it will be only fair to them that they should have a voice in the selection of the Judge, or, it might be, more than one Judge, who would serve upon the Court, so that they would have somebody to adjudicate on the matter in whom they would repose the fullest confidence. That, and that only, is the reason for which these places have not been filled up; and whether, owing to their not being filled up, we shall be unable to provide a candidate—

Lord PHILLIMORE

I never suggested that candidates need come from them. What I suggested was that the nominators of the candidate would be fewer and have less weight.

Earl CURZON of KEDLESTON

They will be fewer, but they will not necessarily carry less weight. Let us suppose that Lord Finlay were left alone, and that a nomination came from Lord Finlay; that would, in my judgment, carry at least as much weight as any three people I can imagine. However I am not prepared to enter into that question now. I have given the explanation of the reasons, really entirely disinterested reasons, for which the places have not been filled up, and I submit that on the whole they justify our action. If the noble and learned Lord, whose authority on this matter is very great, would wish to put any new considerations before me, of course I would consider them, but at the present moment that is the position we have taken.

LORD PHILLTMORE

I should like to thank the noble Earl for what he has said, and to express my great joy at his view that it will be possible to get sufficient ratifications by September. I am sorry to say that that view is not shared at the Secretariat at Geneva, from which I have received more than one anxious letter on this subject. With regard to the other matter, I think the noble Earl cannot have had it present in his mind when he spoke, and therefore I should like to recapitulate that.

EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON

I do not want to interrupt, but it is laid down very clearly in the Rules of Business that the noble Lord is justified in explaining any misrepresentation of his remarks that may have been made, but he is not justified in recapitulating his arguments.

House adjourned at five minutes past seven o'clock.