CHAPTER XI

THE LEAGUE MACHINERY-SECRETARIAT,

ASSEMBLY, COUNCIL

I. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE SECRETARIAT

The Mandates Section of the Secretariat played an important, if anonymous, rôle. In reply to the thanks given at the first session of the Commission to the Secretariat, Professor Rappard, the first Director of the Mandates Section, asked, "Does a man owe gratitude to his pen?" Perhaps the words were truer of the Mandates Section than of most sections of the Secretariat, since most of the other sections had a sprinkling of experts with practical experience in the fields with which they were dealing. With one or two exceptions, this was not the case with the Mandates Section. The policy of confining the secretariat of the Commission to officials who were not nationals of mandatory or even colonial powers made it difficult for the Secretariat to recruit for this section experts with a wide knowledge of colonial problems, much less a practical knowledge of colonial administration. The Commission itself made up for this deficiency since it usually had as members several outstanding experts in the field with long practical experience, a situation which would tend to confirm the Secretariat in its rôle of "pen." On the other hand, the members of the Secretariat were experts in League procedures and had custody of the stock of League experience. By a useful division of functions between the Commission and the Secretariat, the members of the Secretariat became experts on particular territories, whereas the members of the Commission specialized on particular questions affecting all the territories.

The Mandates Section was one of the smallest of the Secretariat, never consisting of more than a Director or Chief of Section, two to four members of section, with four to six junior staff members. Its three heads during its active life were: Professor W. E. Rappard (Swiss), M. Catastini (Italian), and M. de Haller (Swiss).

Some of the principal duties of the Mandates Section were outlined in the League Budget Statement for 1926,1 as follows:

1 L.N. Document C.619.M.201.1925.X.

(a) To prepare the work of the Council and of the Assembly on this question [Mandates];

(b) To correspond with the Governments of the Mandatory Powers;

(c) To serve as a permanent secretariat for the Mandates Commission, which meets twice a year;

(d) To collect and classify . . . data in public and private documents on the mandated areas, the policy of the Mandatory Powers with regard to these areas, and general questions of colonial administration.2

The real rôle of the Secretariat was more important than would appear from such an outline. It was the main, if not the only, link between the Mandates Commission, the Council, the Assembly, and even, in some degree, the governments, although in the latter case the Mandates Commission had its own direct link through the accredited representatives of the mandatory powers. Correspondence of the Section with the governments of the mandatory powers was mainly of a formal character, e.g., in respect of annual reports and other official documents, reminders of the due dates for receipt of annual reports, arrangements for sessions of the Commission. It was the Secretary General who conveyed to the mandatory governments the formal decisions of the Council.

Preparation of the work of the Council and the Assembly on mandates involved preparation of the rapporteur's report and discussion with him and other members of the Council, and preparation of the Secretary General's report to the Assembly. The securing of an agreed report and resolution for Council and Assembly usually involved the Secretariat in real negotiations.

The work of the Mandates Section for the Commission itself was of a varied character. It was the one means whereby contact was maintained with the members of the Commission between the sessions. The Secretariat circulated official documents to the members of the Commission. It also sent them monthly dossiers of documentary material on mandates, of a non-official character, such as articles in journals and newspaper cuttings. Materials of this non-official kind were formidable in bulk and often of doubtful value.

The Section formally acknowledged the receipt of petitions. By resolution of the Council on September 15, 1925, the decisions of the

2 Quoted in Egon F. Ranshofen-Wertheimer, The International Secretariat; A Great Experiment in International Administration (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1945), p. 116.

Council on petitions (based upon the conclusions of the Mandates Commission) were to be communicated to the petitioners and the mandatory powers by the Secretary General. The usual practice was to send the observations of the Commission direct to the petitioners, while a copy of the Secretary General's letter was sent to the mandatory power concerned. In some cases, however, the mandatory power would be used as the channel back to the petitioner. It was the duty of the Section to make a preliminary study of petitions coming from sources other than inhabitants, to examine them from the point of view of receivability, and to report to the chairman of the Commission. The chairman took decisions on such petitions on the advice of the Section.

The agenda for the meetings of the Commission were prepared by the Mandates Section. All the practical arrangements in connection with the actual meeting of the Commission were also made by it. Besides performing formal secretarial functions of this kind, including the important aspect of the arrangements for the attendance of the accredited representatives, the Secretariat gave research and technical assistance to the Commission. It assisted in the preparation of the opening speech of the chairman on the outstanding events since the last session of the Commission. It prepared the opening statement of the head of the Mandates Section on the work of the Secretariat since the last meeting. This was a partial substitute for the formal progress report presented in other League commissions, such as the Opium Advisory Committee. A more than adequate substitute for such a progress report was the series of briefs prepared by the Mandates Section for each of the members of the Commission on particular questions in connection with annual reports and petitions. The Secretariat studied each annual report in advance and prepared a series of questions on it for the use of the members of the Commission, the questions being distributed among them according to their different specialties. Thus, the member of section responsible for the Syrian Report of 1930 prepared a set of fifty questions, with a brief on each. Some of the briefs and draft reports on petitions ran to a fair length. An example of such a secretariat draft, which was used without change by the member of the Mandates Commission concerned, was the report on the Kurdish petition. The number of secretariat briefs prepared was very large. These notes were never circulated officially nor filed in the registry, being regarded as internal and confidential papers between members of the Commission and of the Secretariat.

3 L.N. Document C.P.M.1118, P.M.C. Min. XIX (1930), pp. 191 ff.

The Section also prepared draft reports on petitions for the rapporteur to use in the Commission and to be appended to the report to the Council. It prepared drafts of the observations of the Commission on particular territories. It played a major part in the drafting of the report to the Council and was responsible for editing the minutes of the Commission.

Finally, the Section assisted the Council, prepared the draft rapporteur's note for the Council, together with drafts of Council resolutions, and conducted the necessary discussions with Council members in order to secure agreement. It also assisted the Assembly in its work on mandates, particularly in connection with the discussions in the Sixth Committee.

The "C.P.M." series of mimeographed documents gives some measure of the activity. The number of documents ran to some 2180 papers of an extremely varied character, including, for example: important communications from governments, petitions, observations by governments on petitions, occasionally laws and decrees, memoranda by members of the Commission.

The work of the League Secretariat in connection with slavery was also performed by the Mandates Section. Thus it acted in connection. with the Temporary Slavery Committee of 1924, the Committee of Experts on Slavery appointed by the Assembly in September, 1925, and the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery appointed by the Assembly resolution of October 12, 1932, which held in all five sessions.* It carried out the secretarial duties involved in the Slavery Convention of September 25, 1926, namely, the receiving and classifying of information supplied by the parties under Article 7 of the convention, and reporting to the Assembly each year.

The budget at the disposal of the Mandates Section was small. It averaged about 220,000 Swiss francs a year. Of this amount, about 160,000 were for salaries of officials, 38,000 for the sessions of the Mandates Commission, and the remainder for administrative expenses. It may be remarked here that there was no reserve in such a budget that would finance visits by members of the Secretariat or members of the Mandates Commission to the territories. The possibility of such visits was contemplated when the mandates system was first set up, but there was no definite basis for such visits in either the Covenant or the man

4 See below, Chapter XV.

dates texts and they were not looked upon with any favor by the Assembly. No budgetary provision was ever made for them by the Assembly.5

In a real sense the League organization was a unity. All parts of the League served each particular part. As we shall see below, the Mandates Commission was dealing with the most diverse issues affecting a large group of territories, with many of which special organs of the League (e.g., those dealing with dangerous drugs, health, transit, and other matters) were concerned. The Commission received assistance, therefore, from these organs, as well as from the corresponding sections of the Secretariat. It had naturally at its disposal all the essential central sections of the Secretariat, such as the Political and Legal Sections. In principle the Secretary General was the Secretariat. He was Secretary of the Council and of the Assembly, and the secretaries of all committees served him as deputies. Rule No. 1 of the Office Rules of the Secretariat began with the statement, "All decisions in the Secretariat are taken by the Secretary General or under his authority." It went on to refer to the draft rapporteur's notes prepared by the different sections of the Secretariat. "The drafts of reports for Rapporteurs to the Council," it laid down, "shall be submitted to the Secretary-General before they are submitted to the Rapporteurs concerned." Thus, the consultation with the rapporteur by the head of a section could take place only after clearing with the Secretary General. Consultation with the rapporteur was no mere formality, and often involved long journeys on the part of the Secretariat, as in 1930, when M. Catastini and M. de Haller traveled to Bucharest to see M. Titulesco.

The League Secretariat owed its influence to its objectivity and its efficiency. Its members had no private policies. The submission of formal proposals was a matter exclusively for the members of the Commission or the Council. There could thus be no formal submission of a Secretariat resolution, such as was possible in the first General Assembly of the United Nations.

5 M. Rappard, first Director of the Mandates Section, made a visit in a private capacity to Palestine, and two officials of the Section accompanied the mission of observers sent by the Council in 1936-37 to the Sanjak of Alexandretta (Syria). A member of the Mandates Section (Mr. Peter Anker) was secretary of the Commission for the organization and supervision of the elections in the Sanjak of Alexandretta in 1937-38.

6

• League of Nations, Secretariat Office Rules (Geneva, 1936), p. 7.