“Leap in the Dark"

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 776, 24 September 1929, Page 9

“Leap in the Dark"

BRITAIN AND WORLD COURT Empire Disintegration Feared (United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) LONDON, Sunday. THE signing of the Optional Clause of the International Court, or Geneva’s “leap in the dark,” may have most disintegrating effects on the British Empire, according to Professor J. H. Morgan, professor cf constitutional law at University College, London.

In an article in the “Sunday Referee”' the professor says it will almost certainly be used by certain elements in two of the Dominions and India, which make no secret of the fact that their political objective is secession from the Empire.

Imperial dispute. By adhering to the optional clause we have played into the hands of the secessionists. “The Irish Free State having signed without reservation may summon Britain before the Court to decide its obligations under the Anglo-Irish agreement. Worse still, if India secures Dominion status she may follow the Irish precedent, sign without reservation and summon before the Court the Dominions which exclude Oriental migrants. “As was pointed out by New Zealand in 1925, our adhesion to the Court’s compulsory jurisdiction is unnecessary and undesirable, but if anything is to be gained by it we should have taken care to secure that the Empire acted unitedly and agreed to identical reservations. I tear that in seeking peace outside the Empire we have only succeeded in sowing the seeds of dissension within it.”

“The terms of South Africa's subscription to the clause are obscure,” says the writer, “but they suggest a glancing blow at tbe Privy Council. The Irish Free State has subscribed in unreserved terms, of which it is no exaggeration to say they are calculated to deal a lethal blow at the constitutional structure of the Empire.

is true that Britain signed with a reservation excluding inter-imperial disputes from the. jurisdiction of The Hague Court, but the fatal flaw in that reservation is that The Hague Court itself will be the sole judge as to whether a dispute is an inter-