Owing to the omission of the regular September meetings of the League Council and Assembly, it was announced on Nov. 15 that the present members of the Court would continue in office next year without the new election of judges, which was scheduled to occur in 1939 at the end of the present nine-year term. By July 20, 47 candidates had been nominated by the national groups.
Decisions.
Panevezys-Saldutiskis Railway Case.
In this case brought by Estonia against Lithuania, the Court on Feb. 23 delivered its judgment by a vote of 10 to 4 that it could not entertain the Estonian claim owing to Lithuania's objection to the Court's jurisdiction being well-founded. The case concerned railway property situated in Lithuania which, through the general process of separation of the Baltic states from Russia and the nationalization and purchase of various companies, became the property of the Estonian Government in 1923. As part of the 'First Company of Secondary Railways in Russia,' Estonia requested the Lithuanian Government to take steps to hand over the Panevezys-Saldutiskis Railway; this claim Lithuania refused to entertain. Estonia asked the Court to recognize its rights and Lithuania's wrongful action, and Lithuania denied that Estonia had a national claim since it did not own the property at the time the injury was suffered, and asserted that Estonia had not exhausted the local remedies in Lithuania for the damage. The Court supported both objections to its jurisdiction: Estonia had not instituted proceedings in the Lithuanian courts, which administer the law controlling the company; and Lithuania's objection to Estonia's national claim could not be dismissed without first settling the larger question of ownership, which belonged to the merits of the case and thus was not before the World Court at the present time.
Société Commerciale de Belgique.
This case, in which Belgium, taking up the cause of a Belgian company, had instituted proceedings against the Greek Government, was on June 15 decided by the Court, 13 votes to 2. The judgment first analyzed the facts, which briefly were the following. In 1925 the Greek Government made a contract with the Belgian company to construct and equip certain railway lines and, for financing the project, to issue bonds which were to form part of Greece's external debt. Because of the general financial crisis the Greek Government was obliged in 1932 to default on payments. The company was unable to meet its obligations, the work ended, and an arbitral tribunal fixed the amount of the Greek debt to the company. In the course of time both parties made proposals regarding the debt, which the Greek Government found impossible to pay. Finally, it proposed a long-term settlement, which Belgium regarded as contrary to the terms of the arbitral awards. The Belgian Government then asked the Court to declare that Greece had violated its international obligations by refusing to execute the awards, and to fix the amount of reparation due for this violation. Upon Greek denial that it had disputed the awards or refused to execute them, the Belgian Government asked the Court to say that the awards were obligatory without reserve and that their execution was not affected by conditions for the payment of the external debt of Greece. The Court found that Belgium had altered its first submission by subsequent claims and refused to allow such a transformation of the original application. Thus, the final submission should be regarded as the real question, which boiled down to the fact that both parties accepted the definitive and obligatory character of the arbitral awards, and the two Governments were in principle agreed upon the possibility of negotiating a friendly settlement with regard, among other things, to the ability of Greece to pay. The Court ruled out of its consideration the bases of such an agreement and any opinion connected with the financial ability of Greece as to its external debt.
The Optional Clause.
The Court's jurisdiction has been accepted during the year by Egypt and by Liechtenstein. Both Governments also accepted, for five years, the optional clause providing for compulsory jurisdiction. Egypt thus becomes a party to the Court, while Liechtenstein, a principality, is entitled to appear before it. Hungary also renewed its acceptance of the optional clause for the period from Aug. 13, 1939 to April 10, 1941, as did Greece for a five-year period. Although Spain, Peru and Hungary withdrew from the League of Nations during 1939, they remained members of the Court.
During September the governments of the Union of South Africa, Australia, the United Kingdom, France, India and New Zealand gave notice that they would not regard their acceptance of the optional clause as covering disputes arising out of events of the war in the new situation that has occurred both because of war and because no longer do members of the League of Nations regard Article XVI (sanctions) and Article XVII (settlement of disputes with non-members) of the Covenant as binding upon them in a compulsory and uniform manner.
Under its compulsory jurisdiction as provided by the optional clause, the Court received on June 17 the Gerliczy case, brought against Hungary by Liechtenstein in upholding the claim of its national. M. Felix Gerliczy, that certain judgments of the Royal Curia of Hungary are contrary to international law and therefore entitle him to compensation. The Court has also under consideration the case between Belgium and Bulgaria regarding a Belgian street railway franchise in Sofia. See also LEAGUE OF NATIONS.
