A.—s

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public value, has recently purchased it, and has engaged himself not to resell it without having previously offered it to the League at the price paid. One can easily justify the assumption that development in this part of Geneva will be such as to cause a considerable increase in values, and on this ground, as well as on others, it seems desirable that the League should acquire the house occupied by the Secretary-General. The Fourth Committee so decided. The price is 775,000 Swiss francs. A mortgage on the property of 200,000 Swiss francs is to be allowed to remain for the present, and the balance is to be found by having recourse to the surplus for the year 1928. Consequently the usual surplus to be allocated to the members of the League is reduced to 413,659 francs. The Fourth Committee's report on financial questions was presented to and passed by the Assembly on the 25th September (see Document A. 90). It will be seen that the Budget, including the supplementary items, submitted to Governments before the opening of the Assembly amounted to 27,650,506 francs, and that during the course of the Assembly additional credits amounting to 782,742 francs were demanded. By a process of revision of the Budget as a whole, however, the addition was reduced to 559,742 francs. The total Budget for the year 1930 amounts to 28,210,248 francs. The New Building. The foundation-stone of the new building was laid by the President of the Assembly on Saturday, the 7th September. Amongst the articles placed in the stone was a small box containing a sovereign, half a crown, and a penny from New Zealand. Other members made similar deposits. There was submitted to the Assembly a report (Document A. 58) from the Building Committee, and this came before the Fourth Committee. There was a short discussion, in which stress was laid on the need for adapting the design of the Assembly Hall in such a manner as to provide good acoustic properties. It is to be hoped that the architects and others concerned (to whom the best advice is being made available) will not lose sight of this aspect. The Assembly suffers greatly from the bad acoustics of the hall in Geneva which has been used for its meetings since 1920. The Fourth Committee's report on this question to the Assembly (Document A. 80) was passed on the 23rd September. Supervisory Commission. The Ninth Assembly decided that in future the members of the Supervisory Commission should be appointed by the Assembly, and not by the Council. The Council proposed that the General Committee of the Assembly should submit a list of five names to the Assembly, and this method of nomination was approved by the Fourth Committee, on the understanding that two of the members elected this year should be nominated for one year, two for two years, and one for three years, the vacancies, of course, being filled by the Assembly as they arose. A proposal was made that the Supervisory Committee should be increased to seven members. All those who spoke in favour of the motion praised highly the work of the old committee of five members, but adduced no sufficiently good reason for increasing the number. Much valuable time was wasted in discussing the proposal, until one delegate drily remarked that had membership of the Fourth Committee been limited to five persons the question would have been settled in a few minutes. The proposal was put to the vote and heavily defeated. Consideration of the question of the re-eligibility for election of retiring members was postponed till next year. The Fourth Committee's report was adopted by the Assembly on the 14th September (Document A. 54). The old Supervisory Committee having resigned, the Assembly elected, on the 23rd September, the following : Lord Meston, Count Moltke, M. Osusky, M. Parra Perez, and M. Reveillaud to serve as members, and M. Botella and Prince Yarnaidya to serve as substitute members. (See Document A. 74.) Permanent Court of International Justice. The recommendations of the First Committee regarding the revision of the statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice involved considerations of a financial nature. These are dealt with in a report of the Supervisory-Commission (pages 3 and 4 of Document A. 5 (a)), where will be found the recommendations of the Commission regarding the salaries, pensions, and travellingallowances of members of the Court. These recommendations were approved by the Fourth Committee, and a resolution on the subject was passed by the Assembly at its meeting on the 14th September (Document A. 53). No increase under this heading is involved for 1930, as the revised statute cannot come into force before the Ist January, 1931. Allocation of Expenses. As stated in my report of the Ninth Assembly, the present scale of allocation of the expenses of the League will remain in force until the end of 1932. This year the Fourth Committee passed a resolution requesting all States members of the League to forward to the Secretariat their estimates and closed accounts for each financial period regularly and immediately on publication, and drawing particular attention to the importance of supplying the budgetary documents for the financial year 1930-31. It will be recollected that the Committee on the Allocation of Expenses is to submit to the Assembly of 1932 a revised scale of allocation. Contributions in Arrears. The report, which was passed by the Assembly on 23rd September, is numbered A. 88.