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on the subject between the two Governments were abortive. On the 14th-28th January, 1924, however, fresh negotiations took place at Oslo (Christiania) which resulted in an ad referendum agreement,1 designed to protect Norwegian rights while leaving the question of sovereignty undecided. This compromise encountered opposition in both countries, especially in Norway, but eventually the Norwegian Parliament adopted the agreement by 127 votes to 83 and the Danish by 85 to 45, and on the 9th July a treaty was signed, which came into force, for twenty years, on the following day.

In March 1924 the Norwegian Government introduced into Parliament four bills, one for the ratification of the Spitzbergen Convention which had been signed in Paris on the 9th February, 1920, and the others for applying general and special Norwegian legislation to this Arctic territory (which, like the east coast of Greenland, was not under permanent human occupation). The Norwegian Parliament ratified the convention unanimously on the 21st July.'

In November 1924 the Soviet Government sent a circular notification to foreign Governments regarding the rights of the U.S.S.R. over Arctic Islands lying to the north of Siberia, in which it recalled a similar notification which had been made by the Imperial Russian Government in 1916. This démarche was due, no doubt, to the controversy over Wrangell Island.9

1 Le Temps, 1st February, 1924. 3 Ibid., 29th March, 1924.

5 Ibid., 6th March, 1924.

2 The Times, 22nd March, 1924. 4 Le Temps, 13th June, 1924.

The text is printed in the British White Paper, Cmd. 2092 of 1924.

7 The Times, 22nd July, 1924.

8 Le Temps, 8th November, 1924.

• This controversy will be dealt with in the Survey for 1925.

PART III

TROPICAL AFRICA

(i) The Rectification of Frontier in Jubaland between the British Kenya Colony and Italian Somaliland (1919-25).

IN the agreement between France, Russia, Great Britain, and Italy which was signed in London on the 26th April, 1915,1 and in virtue of which Italy entered the War on the side of the other signatories, the thirteenth article ran as follows:

In the event of France and Great Britain increasing their colonial territories in Africa at the expense of Germany, those two Powers agree in principle that Italy may claim some equitable compensation, particularly as regards the settlement in her favour of the questions relative to the frontiers of the Italian colonies of Eritrea, Somaliland and Libya and the neighbouring colonies belonging to France and Great Britain.

During the Peace Conference of Paris, when it had become evident that the greater part of the former German colonies in Africa were to be assigned as mandates to France and Great Britain, negotiations were started between these two Powers and Italy for a rectification of frontiers between French North-West Africa and the Italian colony of Libya,2 between Libya and the then British Protectorate of Egypt, and between the Italian colony of Somaliland and the British colony of Kenya. The result of the Franco-Italian negotiations has been described in the preceding volume.3 The question of the Italo-Egyptian frontier passed out of the hands of the British Government into those of the Egyptian Government after the British Declaration of the 28th February, 1922.4 There remained the question of rectifying the Anglo-Italian frontier in the basin of the River Juba-a question which was the most important of the

1 For the text see the British White Paper, Cmd. 671 of 1920, or the reprint in H. P. C., vol. v, pp. 384–93.

2 In Italian 'Libia'.

3 Survey, 1920–3, pp. 360–1.

See H. P. C., vol. vi, p. 203. The history of Anglo-Egyptian relations will be taken up from this point in the Survey for 1925, and that of the ItaloEgyptian frontier in a future volume.

three, since the territory at stake was less undesirable than the Sahara and the Libyan Desert.

The negotiations in regard to Jubaland were opened during the Peace Conference of Paris by Lord Milner and Signor Tittoni. Lord Milner at once agreed to cede to Italy the British portion of the Juba valley (the River Juba itself at that time constituting the Anglo-Italian frontier) together with the Port of Kismayu close to the river's mouth; and this offer included almost everything of substantial value which Italy could expect to obtain, since, apart from the immediate neighbourhood of the river, which was suitable for cotton growing, the country was nothing but desert and steppe providing precarious pasturage for nomadic Somali tribes. In September 1919 Lord Milner suggested a definite line starting from the Anglo-Abyssinian frontier on the River Dawa a little above its confluence with the Juba and striking the coast a little to the southwest of Kismayu, after following for a certain distance, without anywhere passing to the west of, the 41st meridian. Signor Tittoni, on the other hand, proposed a line starting from the AngloAbyssinian frontier at Moyale, much farther west, and striking the coast at Dick's Head, after intersecting the Lorian Swamp—a line which would have transferred to Italy almost twice as much Somali pasture-land as the Milner Line. After this, the negotiations on the Italian side passed into the hands of Signor Scialoja, and in April 1920 he agreed with Lord Milner upon a line which followed the original Milner Line in nowhere passing to the west of the 41st meridian, but which coincided with the Tittoni Line in striking the coast at Dick's Head-thus assigning an additional strip of littoral, including Port Durnford, to Italy. The British Government held at the time that, in consenting to this additional cession, they were entering into an ‘enlarged transaction', and were not merely executing the undertaking given in the London Agreement of 1915, Article 13. They therefore attached the condition. that the cession could only become effective as part of the general settlement of all the issues raised at the Peace Conference', and 'this condition' was accepted by the Italian Government at the time '.1 Lord Milner's reservation can only be regarded as reasonable and prudent, considering the extent of the Italian demands in the

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1 The words between the quotation marks are taken from a statement made in the British House of Commons on the 3rd March, 1924, by the then Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. See also Mr. MacDonald's statement in the House of Commons on the 25th February, 1924, in which he mentioned that Lord Milner's reservation had been made in writing.

particular case and the difficulties encountered by the other Principal Allied and Associated Powers at the Peace Conference in dealing with Italy over more important questions. The inevitable result was, however, that a local settlement was continually postponed. At first, so it was alleged on the Italian side,1 the transfer of Jubaland was made conditional on the recognition by Italy of the British Protectorate over Egypt. Meanwhile, the Italian Government put

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forward an additional demand-not, this time, for the whole of the territory between the Milner-Scialoja and the Tittoni Lines, but for a triangle projecting westward into Kenya Colony, with its apex in the Lorian Swamp and its base along that part of the MilnerScialoja Line which coincided with the 41st meridian; and thereafter the British Government took up the position that the transfer must be linked with an equitable settlement of the question of the Dodecanese.2 The British attitude regarding the Dodecanese,

1 See the Corriere della Sera, 5th March, 1924.

2 See the note on the Dodecanese Question at the end of this section.

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together with the Italian demand for additional territory, prevented any further progress towards a settlement of the Jubaland frontier until the year 1924, though abortive discussions appear to have taken place in May 1923.1

In the first days of January 1924, a few weeks before Mr. Baldwin's Government in Great Britain was succeeded by that of Mr. MacDonald, negotiations were reopened in London between the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Curzon, and the Italian Ambassador, the Marquess della Torretta; 2 but no results had been reached before the Labour Government took office. It seems to have been hoped in Italy that Mr. MacDonald and his colleagues would show themselves more accommodating than their predecessors, but on the 20th February, 1924, the new Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Ponsonby, stated in answer to a question in the House of Commons that the negotiations had not yet reached a conclusion because more extensive territorial claims in Jubaland had been advanced by the Italian Government to which His Majesty's Government did not see their way to accede, and that any settlement would, of course, have to include an equitable arrangement respecting the connected question of the ultimate status of the Dodecanese. This statement elicited such vigorous protests, official as well as unofficial, on the Italian side,3 that an explanatory statement was immediately made by a high official authority' to the London correspondent of the Corriere della Sera and was published in Milan on the 23rd February. Mr. Ponsonby's answer was described as 'little more than a definition of what the British policy had been when Lord Curzon was at the head of the Foreign Office', and it was hinted that the new Government had not yet studied the question or settled its policy. On the 25th February this was frankly admitted in the House of Commons by Mr. MacDonald, in a statement in which he also referred to Lord Milner's reservation and the position regarding the Dodecanese which Great Britain had taken up hitherto.

In March Mr. MacDonald, after studying the history of the question, made proposals to the Italian Government for a basis on which negotiations might be resumed, apparently along the following lines : 5 if the Italian territorial demands were confined to the

1 The Corriere della Sera, 11th January, 1924.

2 The Manchester Guardian, 10th January, 1924.

3 The Times, 22nd and 23rd February, 1924.

See Mr. MacDonald's statement in the House of Commons on the 3rd March, 1924. 5 The Corriere della Sera, 14th March, 1924.

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