BRITAIN AND AMERICA

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11652, 17 October 1923, Page 8

BRITAIN AND AMERICA

TEN CLAIMS FOR DAMAGES. COMMISSION TO SETTLE. Australian and N.Z. Cable Associet'on LONDON, October 15. The Anglo-American Pecuniary Claims Commission of Arbitration began a series of sittings in London today before M. le Fromageot, a French jurist, acting as umpire, Mr Walter Olds and Mr E. A. Mitchell-Innes, K.C., American and British arbitrators respectively. The tribunal was appointed in 1910 to find a judicial settlement for the claims of British and American citizens. Mr Ronald MoNeil, Foreign Undersecretary, in welcoming the commission on behalf of the British Government, said that it furnished an example of the only civilised method of settling disputes between two nations. The commission will hear 10 claims, four by Americans, who maintain that they were unjustly deprived of land in Fiji when Britain annexed the island in 1874, and two by British cable companies, whose cables were out by the American Navy during the Spanish American War in 1898.