occupied, and an ultimatum demanding an indemnity was sent by Greece to the Bulgarian Government. For two days Bulgaria offered, through the ordinary diplomatic channels, to set up a Court of Enquiry, and then, on this being rejected, appealed to the League. On October 26 the Council met in Paris and requested both parties to give orders within twenty-four hours to their troops to cease hostilities and to evacuate occupied territory within sixty hours. The orders were given and executed in less than sixty hours, and the Council then despatched to the scene of the incident a Commission of Enquiry, under the Presidency of Sir Horace Rumbold, to determine the responsibilities and fix the amount of any damages to be paid by either side and to make recommendations how such incidents might be avoided in the future. In three weeks the Commission issued its report, which was accepted by the Council and both Greece and Bulgaria.

The Commission found that the Greek Government was responsible for the expense, losses, and suffering caused to Bulgaria by the invasion of Greek troops, and recommended that Greece should pay an indemnity of about 45,000l. It further recommended that a special body of frontier guards should be set up, to which a neutral officer should be attached on each side of the frontier, and that a Conciliation Commission should be formed, composed of a Greek and a Bulgarian, with a neutral Chairman. The most important part, however, of the Commission's report dealt with the possibility of preventing such incidents in the future. The root cause of the ill-feeling is to be found in the application or non-application of the Minorities Treaty. The Commission concluded that the tension between the two countries would be greatly reduced if the voluntary exchanges of populations were hastened, and if the Bulgarians leaving Greece were compensated by the Greek Government for their loss of property.

The grievances of minorities is one of the real dangers to European peace. The League, of course, was given the task of supervising the enforcement of the Minority Treaties, which are designed to remove grievances. During 1925, the Council, working in close contact with the Governments concerned, took several important decisions with a view to ensuring the application of the Treaties in Lithuania, Greece, Rumania, and Hungary. It also settled a certain number of questions raised in petitions, and improved the procedure followed in the settlement of such questions, in particular by setting up its own Minorities SubCommittee of three members.

The Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes had provided for a disarmament Conference after a certain number of ratifications of the Protocol had been deposited at Geneva. The number of ratifications having proved insufficient, the Conference could not be convened. The Council, nevertheless, at the request of the Assembly, decided to convene a preparatory

Conference to make a preliminary study of the whole question and to clear the ground for a Conference on the reduction of armaments when the time for such a Conference comes. It was decided to summon this preparatory Conference in February, 1926, and to invite nineteen States to send representatives, these nineteen being the ten States members of the Council, and Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Rumania, Russia, the SerbCroat-Slovene Kingdom, and the United States of America. All these States accepted the invitation with the exception of Russia, which objects, owing to the murder of M. Vorovsky in Lausanne, to participating in a Conference on Swiss soil. The Conference was subsequently postponed at the request of several members of the Council. The delay may be fortunate if it allows the negotiations between Russia and Switzerland at present in progress to arrive at a successful conclusion.

Closely bound up with the reduction of armaments is the League's attempt to limit the private traffic in arms. A Conference was held in the spring of 1925 attended by forty-four countries, including Germany, the United States, and Turkey, and a Convention was adopted to establish a general system of control and publicity for the international trade in weapons. A Protocol was annexed to the Convention prohibiting the use in war of chemical and bacteriological methods of warfare. The actual manufacture of war material by private firms is still under consideration, and a special committee has been set up to study the question.

On the administrative side of its work, the Council did all in its power to mitigate the difficult economic situation in the Saar Valley which arises mainly out of the tariff regulations of France and Germany. It cannot be denied that the situation in the Saar is at present far from happy. Industrial disputes are in progress, and the number of unemployed has risen alarmingly. On the other hand, the recruiting for the local gendarmerie has now almost reached 1,000 men, and the French garrison is to be withdrawn in the near future. A new procedure has been adopted for the settlement of disputes between Poland and Danzig, by which advice from the League's technical organisations will be available for disputes on such matters as railways, postal services, etc. The Mandates Commission met twice, but postponed the examination of the French administration in Syria until February, 1926, in order to give time for M. de Jouvenel, the new High Commissioner, to present his report.

The expert Commission appointed by the Council to investigate the economic situation in Austria reported that the recovery of Austria was now an established fact, and the League's Financial Committee were able to agree with this report. As a result, the Council decided that on January 1, 1926, the financial control of Austria would come to an end, subject to certain precautionary

measures, such as the appointment of a financial Adviser in the place of the financial Controller. The financial reconstruction of Hungary has been so successful that already it is possible to look forward to the time when the Hungarian control can be terminated. Seven hundred thousand Greek refugees have now been established under the Greek Refugee Settlement Scheme, but about half a million still remain to be settled.

In the highly technical fields of double taxation, fiscal evasion, unfair competition, the protection of industrial property and communications and transit, the League's committees continued their work steadily.

A Convention simplifying tonnage measurement in inland navigation was drawn up in Paris by a Conference of European States and signed, among others, by Russia, this being the first League Convention signed by the Soviet Government. The 1909 Road Traffic Convention was revised, the preparatory work for a Passport Conference to be held in 1926 completed, and an extensive inquiry into the traffic conditions on the Rhine and the Danube carried out. Questions of wireless broadcasting, longdistance telephony, the lighting and buoyage of coasts, and the reform of the Calendar have also been studied.

The Sixth Assembly decided that an investigation of economic problems in the widest possible sense would be a desirable task. A preparatory Conference will be convened early in 1926 to prepare the way for a general economic Conference.

The Health Organisation expanded its work considerably, and important progress was made in the technical and scientific work begun in former years, such as biological and serological research, the campaign against malaria, the study of cancer, tuberculosis, and sleeping-sickness (a Commission is being despatched to Central Africa to study sleeping-sickness on the spot). The Singapore Epidemiological Bureau has now been established, and it is proposed to set up a similar Bureau on the West Coast of Africa.

Two International Conferences on the traffic in opium and dangerous drugs drew up Conventions to regular the trade in opium and the manufacture of drugs.

The settlement of Armenian refugees in Erivan was investigated on the spot by Dr. Nansen, and it was decided to recommend that about 25,000 refugees could be settled there if a loan of a million pounds could be raised. Another Commission recommended the settlement of some thousands of Russian refugees in South America at a much smaller cost.

A Draft Convention for the suppression of slavery was submitted to the Sixth Assembly, and by it referred to the Governments for their comments before being finally discussed at the Seventh Assembly. The Draft Convention contains provisions preventing and abolishing slavery and also dealing with forced labour.

During the year the Permanent Court of International Justice gave two decisions and three advisory opinions. The decisions were given in the Mavrommatis dispute between Greece and Great Britain (as the Mandatory Power in Palestine), and in a dispute in Upper Silesia. The advisory opinions related to the exchange of Greek and Turkish populations, the Polish postal service in Danzig, and the third, already referred to, on the Mosul dispute. As in previous years, a certain number of International Treaties were concluded in which the jurisdiction of the Permanent Court is invoked for the solution of certain categories of international disputes should they arise between the signatories.

The Committee for the Progressive Codification of International Law met in 1925 for the first time, when it drew up its range of action and the lines on which it proposed to work in the future.

The Annual Conference of the International Labour Organisation took place in May, and 144 delegates representing 46 States were present. All the important industrial countries of the world were represented except the United States and Russia. The Conference adopted four Draft Conventions dealing with the prohibition of night work in bakeries; the equality of treatment of national and foreign workers as regards accident compensation; workers' compensation for accidents, and workers' compensation for occupational diseases. A Draft Convention to establish a weekly dispension of work in the glass-making industry was rejected by the Conference. The Conference also held a preliminary discussion on the general problems arising out of workers' insurance, and it was decided to place the whole question of Social Insurance upon the Agenda for next year.

The International Labour Office, during the latter part of 1925, devoted a considerable amount of time to the collection of information on conditions in the coal-mining industry throughout the world, and also to a similar inquiry into the conditions of Asiatic labour for the purpose of preparing a general survey of conditions of life and work in the Far East.

The Joint Maritime Commission, which is composed of shipowners and seamen's representatives from different countries and advises the Labour Office on maritime affairs, met in Paris in April and considered, among other matters, general principles for the inspection of working conditions for seamen and the codification of rules relating to seamen's articles of agreement. Both these subjects will be included on the Agenda of the Annual Conference in 1926.

The Fifth Assembly of the League transferred the High Commissariat for Russian and Armenian refugees from the League itself to the International Labour Office, and the work, as mentioned above, showed notable progress, particularly in the regulation of the supply of, and demand for, refugee labour throughout the world.

One hundred and eighty-five ratifications (formal signature as a Treaty) of Conventions adopted by the Conferences of the Organisation have now been received, and thirty-seven others have been authorised, but not formally registered. One hundred and twenty-three ratifications have been recommended by various Governments to their national authorities, but not yet made effective. A feature of the year was the first formal ratification of a Convention by France which has now ratified three, and by Germany, which has now ratified four, Conventions.

The Budget for the League for 1925, including the International Labour Office and the Permanent Court of International Justice, amounted to 920,000l.

CHAPTER II.

IRELAND.

NORTHERN IRELAND

IN Northern Ireland the boundary question during the opening months of 1925 took precedence of all other political issues. Though officially ignored by Sir James Craig's Government, which had announced that it declined to be bound by a settlement to which it was not a party, the Commission established in accordance with Article XII. of the Anglo-Irish Treaty proceeded to hold sittings and collect evidence from both Unionists and Nationalists in the Six Counties. No obstacles were placed in the way of the Commissioners by Northern Ministers, and it was intimated that Unionists in the border counties who desired to give evidence opposing the transfer of the areas in which they resided to the Free State were free to do so.

Sir James Craig and his Cabinet came to the conclusion that with the Boundary Commission at last in being, it was necessary that Ulster opinion as a whole should register its protest in the most emphatic manner against any change that might endanger the rights conferred by the Act of 1920. With this in view it was decided early in March to dissolve Parliament, which, under normal circumstances, could look forward to another year of life, and obtain a new mandate from the constituencies. Polling took place on April 3 and, as far as the boundary question was concerned, Sir James Craig could claim that the result justified the experiment. There were, it is true, no dramatic changes, but dramatic changes were not expected. In Tyrone and Fermanagh the Unionists managed to knock a few thousands off the Nationalist majority, and slightly improved their position in 'Derry. Broadly speaking, however, the verdict showed that on the Partition issue things remained very much as they were in 1920.