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Election of Officers of Assembly. The voting of the various committees for the election of their chairman, which took place on the 2nd September, showed the following results : Committee No. I—Sir1 —Sir Littleton Groom (Australia) ; Committee No. 2 —M. Garay (Panama) ; Committee No. 3—M. Duca (Roumania) ; Committee No. 4—M. Adacti (Japan) ; Committee No. 5 —M. Zahle (Denmark) ; Committee No. 6— M. Enckell (Finland). The Assembly met again the same day and at once proceeded to vote for six Vice-Presidents of the Assembly, who, with the six Presidents of the Committees, form the officers of the Assembly. Those elected were —Lord Parmoor (Great Britain) ; M. Bourgeois (France), M. Salandra (Italy), M. Urrutia (Colombia), M. Tang Tsai Fou (China), M. Skryznski (Poland). The Assembly and the committees having been properly constituted, it was possible to proceed with the business of the session. Disarmament. Mr. MacDonala, the British Prime Minister, arrived in Geneva on Wednesday, the 3rd September, and took his place in the Assembly as the principal delegate of Great Britain. The announcement then made, that he would speak on the following day on disarmament, excited much interest, especially as it was felt that he might have something to say of a constructive nature. On Thursday he received a remarkable ovation, both before and after his speech, which was followed with close attention. Whilst mainly a plea for compulsory arbitration, the speech touched on many points, including the reasons which had actuated Great Britain in rejecting the proposed Treaty of Mutual Assistance, and the powers which the League already possessed under the Covenant to prevent war between States members of the League. Mr. Mac Donald's speech will be found in the Record of the Sixth Plenary Meeting of the Assembly. Apart from the question of security, which was bound to be raised by some nations, and the reliance on the sanctions contained in the Covenant, felt by others, Mr. Mac Donald's speech was bound to be criticized on the score that he had given no adequate lead on the steps to be taken in the event of a refusal to arbitrate or of a decision of a Court of Arbitration not being accepted by a country which had been a party to the proceedings. Several of the speakers who followed, particularly the Prime Ministers of France and Belgium, touched on all these questions ; and Lord Parmoor, the representative of Great Britain on the Council, who spoke after Monsieur Herriot, the Prime Minister of France, in recognizing the difficulty of the problem which has to be faced, mentioned that, so far as he was aware, no country has failed to carry out the decision of a Court of Arbitration in recent times. But many countries are very sceptical of the efficacy of a system of international justice which has not behind it a force such as that provided in the economic sanction of the Covenant, or similar to that which is available to enforce decisions given in national Courts ; indeed, one speaker went so far as to say that it was because the reference to arbitration of the cases which Lord Parmoor had mentioned was voluntary that the decisions had been carried into effect without the use of force ; in fact, Lord Parmoor himself envisaged the possible necessity of having recourse to sanctions of an economic nature. The outlook produced by this exchange of views was not very promising, but on the afternoon of the 6th September the President announced that a motion had been put down in the names of the British and French Delegations requesting the Third Committee to examine the available material on security and on the reduction of armaments ; and the First Committee to consider the articles of the Covenant relating to the settlement of disputes, and Article 36 of the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice (providing for compulsory jurisdiction of the Court), with a view of making it more precise and thus rendering it of more general acceptance. It was felt that the acceptance of this motion would facilitate the summoning of an International Conference upon Armaments as soon as possible after the committees had reported. The Prime Ministers of both Great Britain and France spoke feelingly in support of the motion (Document A. 531, which was adopted unanimously. Report on Work of Council. The debate on the report of the work of the Council of the Secretariat (Docs. A. 8 and A. 8 (a) ) occupied several meetings of the Assembly, and was completed on the 10th September. Interesting and instructive as this report is, it seemed this year not to have assumed that importance which it usually occupies in the debates of the Assembly. This is of course due to the prominence given to disarmament and arbitration. The debate produced a couple of proposals, made respectively by the Swedish and Dutch delegates, on the development of international law, and for the elucidation of opinions given by the Committee of Jurists on the interpretation of certain articles of the Covenant (see page 9 of Document A. 8). The second proposal was subsequently deferred for consideration next year. On the 20th September the Assembly heard, with much gratification, that a general Treaty of Arbitration between Switzerland and Italy had been signed. It passed a resolution expressing to the Governments signatories of the agreement its lively satisfaction at the conclusion of this treaty, the high importance of which is in conformity with the spirit which inspires the work of the Fifth Assembly of the League of Nations. On the afternoon of the 2nd October the Assembly, at its final session, elected the non-permanent members of the Council. The result of the voting was as follows : Uruguay, 43 ; Brazil, 40 ; Czechoslovakia, 40 ; Spain, 36 ; Belgium, 34 ; Sweden, 27.

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