A.—6

40

smaller Powers are not infrequently —I think I might say almost usually —represented by their Foreign Minister or somebody of equal authority in their country: Dr. Benes on behalf of Czocho-Slovakia, M. Nincic on behalf of Serbia, M. Kalfoff on behalf of Bulgaria, and Dr. Nansen on behalf of Norway, and so on; consequently a very large proportion of them, speak- directly for their Governments, anel those who are not actually Ministers are usually people of such importance that anything they say carries the opinions of their countries with them. It was therefore of great importance that there was a really strong, vehement feeding that, the League must act and must do its duty, and a strong feeling also, of course, that the occupation aire! bombardment of Corfu was, in the; circumstances, not a defensible proceeding. Further Proceedings of Council. There had been delivered on the 2nd —and this is an important fact in the situation -the: reply of the Greeks to the note from the Ambassadors' Conference, anil in that reply they expressed their willingness to accept whatever the Ambassadors put upon them. On the same day I received, anel was intensely grateful to the Prime Minister and the' Foreign Secretary for them, the instructions from the British Government authorizing me to take whatever action 1 thought right to support the Covenant. The next day the Greek note to the Ambassadors was received, of cerurse, and wes received —I need not go into the detail erf it -we received information of the rather vehement anel formal rejection of all competence of the; League on behalf of the Italian Government. That was the 2nd September. When wes met on the 4th September, in the first, public meeting of the Council, this Italian instructions had not arrived. They had sent, somebody, erne of their members, to Hermes to get; personal instructions, and all that we- did on that occasion was to hear a, further proposal from the Greek Government offering this deposit of 50,000,000 lire in a, Swiss bank to await whatever damages might, be awarded against, them. Then came the meeting of the sth September, and then we had a communication for the first time from the; Ambassadors' Conference telling us what was going on in Paris. We had a, speech from the Italian representative denying the competence of the League, in a vesry much more moderate form, it must be sale!, than the language which had beesn used outside the Council of the League:, and it was on that occasion that wes had resae! to us the relevant articles of the Covenant, in French and English, pointing out, what the duties of the Council were, and that we coulel not infringe those duties without breaking the Covenant anil incidentally breaking the Treaties of Peaese' erf which the Covenant was part. It became clear at this stage, berth from what Signer Salandra said to us in this Council ami from information conveyed ter us from outside, that the, Italians were now prepared- they had not said ser up till then to accept thes Conference of Ambassadors, not only as the proper authority for dealing with the offence to tins Ambassadors, but, as determining what ought to be done between Greece and Italy, and therefore on that date, we, were lor the first, time in the, presence of an agreement by the two parties of the; dispute to accept the: decision erf a tribunal, of a body, outsiele: the League. We had a, meeting; a certain number of members of the Council met and considered what reply we, ought to send to the Ambassadors, and we. felt that our business under this Covenant was to elo everything we could to promote a settlement; and, since the two parties had agreeei to accept the decision of the Conference erf Ambassadors, our object henceforward was to do everything we could to facilitates the task of the Ambassadors, and to make their decision as nearly in accordance with public opinion of the world as expressed at Geneva as we could. We therefore drew up the proposed terms of settlement apart from the, question of the evacuation of Corfu, and these were proposed by the Spanish member of the Council at the meeting of the Council on the 6th. We were unable to scire! those proposals as agreed recommendations to the Council of Ambassadors, anel it was in orelesr to get over that difficulty that at my suggestion we decided to send the whole of the minutes of our proceedings to the Ambassadors, who, as we knew, were going to meet tins next day to deaf with thes matter; anel tins minutes included not only the actual proposals, which were, in fact, thes proposals which wore afterwards adopted practically without alteration, or very small alterations, by tin; Conference of Ambassadors, but also included certain very important declarations by other members besides the British member erf the Council as to the competence of the League. The Belgian member, for instance, M. Hymans, made a very strong declaration as to the clear competence of the League. That was assented to by the Swedish member and by the Uruguayan member, anil also by the: Spanish representative. It was, of course, quite wesll known that that res presented the strongfeeling, as I have already said, of all these: nations there assembled at Geneva, anil 1 happen to know, as a matter of fact, that that feeling was conveyed by a great number of different nations both at Paris and at, Homo to the Governments of France and Italy. I have not myself the least, doubt, that, that strong feeling had a considerable effect upon the readiness with which the Conference of Ambassadors on the 7th September adopted the suggestions which the Council of the League had put forward as to the settlement of the question apart from the evacuation of Corfu. The: Conference erf Ambassadors did adopt thesm. They were accepted by Greece and Italy ; and then took place a rather awkward pause. Wo were informed that the Conference erf Ambassadors were going to ileal with the question erf Corfu also. As I have said only too often, tire: business of the League was to promote an agreement and a settlement, and as long as there was any prospect of a, settlement being reached it was not the duty erf tire Ceruncil of the League to intervene. They therefore held their hand altogether during (dies next, few clays, awaiting the decision of the •Conference of Ambassadors as to what was going to happen in Corfu. They, of course, reserved to themselves the right to take the: matter up again if no settlement was reached, or if a settlement was reached so plainly in defiance erf all public law that they could not allow it to pass. As a matter of fact, on the 13th the settlement was reached, and the note which was sent by the Conference of Ambassadors to Greece was not unsatisfactory. It said that it adhered to the terms, erf course, of the 7th September, the first note, and that, having received from the, Italian Ambassador a statement that Italy would in any case, evacuate Corfu on the 27th September—which,