On July 2, 1924, the President proclaimed two treaties signed with France on February 13, 1923, relating to rights in the French mandated territories of Cameroons and Togoland.1 A similar treaty was made with Japan on February 11,1922,2 and Secretary of State Hughes has announced the policy of securing “ fair and equal opportunities” in all the mandated territories.3

The Netherland-America Foundation, an organization composed of Americans of Dutch descent, of Hollanders residing in the United States, and of all those interested in furthering friendship between this country and the Netherlands, has announced the initiation of a Grotius Memorial Fund for the purpose of presenting a memorial window to the Nieuwe Kerk at Delft, Holland, where Grotius lies buried. The presentation will take place in 1925 in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary of the publication of the De Jure Belli ac Pads by the “Father of International Law.” The suggestion has received the approval of the Dutch Government and is endorsed by Chief Justice Taft and other persons prominent in the American legal profession.

The Conference of Financial Experts held at Brussels in September,1920, recommended to the League of Nations as part of its scheme of financial rehabilitation “ that the activities of the League might usefully be directed towards promoting certain reforms,” the first of which was that progress should be made toward the unification of the laws of the various countries relating to bills of exchange and bills of lading. The International Chamber of Commerce and other trade bodies have likewise strongly supported a resumption of initiative in this direction, which was interrupted by the war. As a result, the Economic Committee of the League of Nations, acting in cooperation with the Government of the Netherlands,and with the approval of the Council and the Assembly, appointed four legal experts to report their opinions upon the attitude now prevailing in the various countries of the world toward the work of the two Hague Conferences on Negotiable Instruments and also as to whether further action toward unification was likely to meet with practical success. The following highly qualified experts were charged with the task: Sir Mackenzie Chalmers, well known as the author of the English Bills of Exchange Act of 1882; the late Professor David Josephus Jitta, formerly Councillor of State of the Netherlands; Professor Franz Klein, of Austria, and Professor Lyon-Caen, the well-known French authority on commercial law.

An admirable illustration of both just and generous treatment of an alien minority is to be found in a brief pamphlet recently published by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, entitled: The German Minority in South Jutland—A Summary of the Danish Legislation.

The Thirty-third Conference of the International Law Association will open on Monday, September 8, 1924, at Stockholm. The subjects for discussion will include the proposed statute of a Permanent International Criminal Court and reports of the Committees on General Average, Foreign Judgments, Systems of Evidence, Codification, Nationality, Commercial Arbitration, Neutrality, and Aviation.