During the life of the League of Nations the Mandates, created in conformity with Article 22 of its Covenant, have only once given rise to proceedings before the Permanent Court of International Justice. The case was that between Greece, as plaintiff, and Great Britain, in her capacity of Mandatory Power, as respondent, over the concessions for certain public works to be constructed by a Greek subject Mavrommatis in Palestine under contracts and agreements which he had concluded with the Ottoman authorities in January 1914. The respondent party immediately raised a preliminary objection to the jurisdiction of the Court. How specious such questions of jurisdiction often are, was proved by the fact that the Court, in a Judgment of 30 August 1924 (Publications P.C.I.J., series A, No. 2), by 7 votes to 5 upheld its jurisdiction in respect of the works at Jerusalem—comprising an electric tramway system, the supply of electric light and power and of drinking water to the city—, while, obviously unanimously, denying it in respect of similar works—including in addition a system of irrigation of the city gardens—at Jaffa. This decision was based on an adjudication clause, obtaining in Article 26 of the Mandate for Palestine of 24 July 1922. On the strength of that Judgment the merits of the controversy over the Jernsalem concessions were dealt with in subsequent proceedings, terminated by a second Judgment of 26 March 1925 (ibid., series A, No. 5), by which (this time with only one dissenting vote), inter alia, the concessions concerned were found to be valid and Article 4 of Protocol XII, annexed to the Peace Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, concerning certain concessions granted in the Ottoman Empire— providing for the obligatory adaptation thereof to the new economic conditions—was held to be applicable to them.—When the ensuing lengthy negotiations between Great Britain and Greece for such adaptation reached deadlock in 1927, Greece again applied under the said Article 26 of the Mandate to the Permanent Court, with the object of achieving the award of damages for the asserted failure of Great Britain, in carrying-out the second Judgment, to comply with another provision (Article 11) of the Mandate, dealing with the methods of developing the country. Once more the British Government raised a preliminary objection to the jurisdiction of the Court, maintaining that it was not competent to deal with this element of the dispute, and this time, by 7 votes to 4, the Court, by a third Judgment of 10 October 1927 (ibid., series A, No. 11), upheld the objection for reasons too technical to be summarized here.

Eloquent evidence exists of the special importance of aviation accident insurance. Although air transport has gradually obtained its place under the normal means of conveyance—in international passenger transport perhaps even the first place—it still carries the odium of being more hazardous than surface transport. A comparison of the annual accident statistics for air carriers, railroads and inter-city buses up to a few years ago, shows that the number of passenger lives lost per passenger mile travelled by scheduled airlines has always exceeded the number of lives lost per passenger mile travelled on the railroads. Notwithstanding the considerably increased safety factor of air travel, the aircraft from its very nature provides a risk which in itself is much more serious than that of other means of transport. It may be that statistics show that accidents in road traffic are more numerous than those in air traffic—this on a comparable basis—but air traffic throughout the years shows by comparison more death casualties.

La Cour s'est réunie en 1963 pendant 78 jours. Elle a commencé ses travaux le 16 septembre. La session a duré jusqu'au 2 décembre. Une seule affaire a été traitée, celle du Cameroun septentrional (exception préliminaire) entre le Cameroun et le Royaume-Uni. L'arrêt a été rendu le 2 décembre.

The author of the aiticle “On limitation of shipowners' liability”, published in volume X, pp. 139–155 and 239–255, asked us to insert the following remarks:

p. 139, 11th line from above: “ad referendum” to be omitted;

p. 148, 4th line from below: “The convention was signed on October 10, 1957 by 18 countries, of which 4 ad referendum (Brazil, Israel, Portugal and Spain)”. In footnote 31 “Portugal” has been omitted;

p. 254, note 81, 15th line from above: the following words are to be inserted behind “Court of Cass.”: 1927, N.J. 1927, 1259; C.A. The Hague, 1934, N.J. 1937, no. 108, aff. Court Rotterdam; Court of Cass.”.

In the note on page 389–390 of volume X (Netherlands Judicial Decisions) the letters a, b, c and d should be read as c, d, e and f.