SOVEREIGN POWERS.

Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17936, 3 December 1923, Page 9

SOVEREIGN POWERS.

# HELD BY MANDATORY NATION. (BY CABLE—FRBSS ASSOCIATION COPYEKJBT.) (KBCTBE's TELEGRAMS.) DURBAN, November 30. The Appellate Division of the Supremo Court has delivered an important judgment affecting the legality ot a mandatory power under the Treaty of Versailles, arising out of an appeal against the conviction of Jacobus Christian, on© of the leaders of the Bondelswarta revolution of 1922, on ti charge of high treason.

The question at issuo was whether a mandatory Government was a sovereign power, against which treason could be committed. The Court quoted the precedents of the lonian Islands and the Transvaal Republic, although in both cases the sovereignty was considerably curtailed by a British protectorate and suzerainty respectively, but their subjects were liable to an action for treason. The Court held that the Government of South-West Africa was not a sovereign independent state but the sovereignty formerly residing in the German Governemt must now reside in the Union Government as mandatory and the Union is the sovereign power, being a signatory to the Treaty of Versailles, and a member of the League of Nations. The appeal was dismissed.