A. —5

I should perhaps also mention that, though the South African delegate in the committee merely pointed out the peculiar difficulties of administration in South West Africa, General Hertzog, in his speech in the Assembly on the 12th September (see Verbatim Record of Fifth Plenary Meeting) referred somewhat pointedly to the risk of friction and irritation arising from the Mandates Commission, or the Sixth Committee, concerning themselves with abstract questions such as where sovereignty resides or the permanency of mandates. The committee's report to the Assembly and the relative resolutions will be found in Document A. 69 (1). This report and the resolutions were adopted by the Assembly without debate on the 30th September. Refugees. At the commencement of proceedings the Chairman, Sir Robert Borden (Canada), paid tribute to the work of the late Dr. Nansen, and various delegates also spoke of his great work on behalf of the refugees. The committee had before it reports from the Secretary-General of the League (Document A. 28) and from the Inter-Governmental Advisory Commission (Document A. 34), which both recommended that, instead of the League Secretariat controlling the whole of the refugee work, as was arranged as an experiment last year, a new Office should be set up to control the humanitarian side of the work. These recommendations were endorsed by the committee in its report (Document A. 75) and approved by the Assembly, and in future the Secretary-General of the League will deal only with the political and legal protection of refugees (i.e., with such matters as their status while they remain without nationality). The new Office, which is to have its seat in Geneva, is to consist of representatives of the Inter-Governmental Advisory Commission, the interested private organizations, the League, and the International Labour Office. It is to be under the direction of M. Max Huber, President of the International Red Cross Committee and former President of the Permanent Court of International Justice. Although it will act as an autonomous body, it will be required to submit its accounts and annual report to the League. Its duties will be to carry on the work performed by the late Dr. Nansen, as High Commissioner for Refugees, with regard to providing relief and assisting to find work for refugees. The main portion of its funds will be derived from contributions from private organizations and from the sale of " Nansen stamps." These " Nansen stamps " have to be purchased annually by refugees in connection with the renewal of the certificates required by them as identity papers while they remain without nationality. The League will, however, continue to subsidize the new Office to the same limited extent to which it has in recent years subsidized Dr. Nansen's work, but no additional cost to the League is involved. The reasons which led -up to the decision to divide the work were partly that experience gained during the experiment last year had shown the difficulty of working a system under which the Secretary-General had to be responsible for the expenditure of funds in various countries and for the assistance of individual cases, and partly because, while it was decided last year that the relief work must be wound up within a maximum period of ten years, the protection of refugees as regards political rights and status will probably require to be continued for a considerably longer period. Interesting information regarding the present position in regard to refugees is contained in Document A. 28, and particularly in Appendix No. 1 to that document, in which is set out the number of refugees in each country and the proportion who are unemployed. The number of Russian refugees is set down as 950,399, and the number of Armenians as 154,231, of whom 114,115 and 63,244 respectively are shown as unemployed, and an additional 47,916 and 16,556 respectively as incapable of earning their living (disabled ex-service-men, young children, &c.). These figures take no account of former refugees who had become naturalized in the countries in which they now reside. A particularly difficult problem is furnished by the 38,834 Armenian refugees in Greece — mostly unemployed. That country has absorbed the enormous total of one and a half million Greek refugees from Asia Minor, but finds itself unable to assimilate the Armenian refugees, and the new committee is specially directed, by the resolutions adopted by the Assembly, to give early attention to this problem. Slavery. The British Government, whose proposal last year that the Temporary Commission on Slavery should be reconstituted was not adopted by the Tenth Assembly, returned to the charge this year with an even stronger proposal —viz., that a Permanent Slavery Commission should be established and a special section of the Secretariat created to deal with the subject. While sympathizing with the desire of the British Government to ensure more effective action being taken to stamp out not merely slave-trading, but the whole institution of slavery, the majority of the committee were not prepared to support the setting-up of the proposed new organization, which would have involved a considerable increase in expenditure. When its original proposal was defeated the British delegation reverted to the proposal it made last year, that the Temporary Commission on Slavery should be revived ; but it was unable to obtain acceptance for this proposal, or even for the still more modest suggestion that an Advisory Committee of Experts should be set up. As will be seen from Document A. 77, the committee, while admitting the inadequacy of the information sent to the Secretariat last year, recommended that the present procedure be continued for another year, in the hope that this year States concerned will amplify the information furnished by them not only with regard to the position in their own territories, but also as to the general position in regard to slavery. In the Assembly, at its eighteenth plenary meeting, on the 30th September, Viscount Cecil deplored this decision, stating that during the last year the results of the present procedure were absolutely nil, and that no better results could be hoped for this year, as it was too much to expect that States in which slavery still exists would be so self-denying as to supply any adequate information regarding the subject, whilst it would place a State in an extremely invidious position if it were to supply information regarding the shortcomings of any of its neighbours.

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