Milner-Scialoja Line, the British Government would regard a territorial cession of this extent as a fulfilment of its obligations under the London Agreement of the 26th April, 1915, and would waive Lord Milner's reservation. If, on the other hand, the Italian Government still demanded the additional triangle terminating in the Lorian Swamp, then the Milner reservation would stand and the British Government would be unwilling to settle the question of Jubaland apart from that of the Dodecanese. The Italian Government appears to have accepted this basis and to have chosen the former of the two alternatives (which involved a substantial concession on the British side as compared with the position taken up by Lord Milner in April 1920). At any rate, on the 23rd May, the British Foreign Office issued a statement 1 that, as a result of direct negotiation between the Prime Minister and Signor Mussolini, it had been decided to conclude an agreement in regard to Jubaland on the lines laid down by Lord Milner and Senator Scialoja. It was added that Italian experts were being sent to London at once to settle the terms with British experts. The Italian delegation arrived before the end of the month; on the 10th June it was announced 2 that the text of a treaty had been initialled; and on the 15th July the instrument was duly signed in London by Mr. MacDonald and the Marquess della Torretta.

1

Under this treaty 3 His Britannic Majesty, in his own name and on his own behalf, and by virtue of his protectorate over Zanzibar in the name and on behalf of His Highness the Sultan of Zanzibar, so far as the latter may be concerned', transferred to the King of Italy the sovereignty over the territory lying between the existing Anglo-Italian boundary and the Milner-Scialoja Line, the tracée of which was described in detail (Art. 1). The Italian Government agreed to the cancellation of the Treaty of Commerce between Italy and Zanzibar of the 23rd May, 1885 (Art. 3); and undertook both to indemnify the Sultan of Zanzibar for any loss of net revenue arising out of the present transfer, and to pay him, as an indemnity which shall in nowise represent a tribute implying any survival of sovereignty,' the annual sum of £1,000 -the Italian Government being entitled at any time to liquidate these two financial obligations by the payment of a lump sum of £25,000 (Art. 4). If at any time

1 Published in The Times, 24th May, 1924.

2 Ibid., 10th June, 1924.

3 Text in the British White Paper, Cmd. 2194 of 1924.

Representing the proportionate share of the annuity which had previously been paid by the British Government to the Government of Zanzibar.

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the Italian Government desired to abandon all or part of the transferred territory, the British Government was to have the first refusal of it upon such terms as may be just '-any differences between the two Governments as to the terms being subject to arbitration ' in accordance with such procedure as the League of Nations may prescribe' (Art. 5).

These were the political terms of the treaty; but even when the Milner-Scialoja Line had been accepted by the two Governments as the basis of settlement and the interdependence of the Jubaland and Dodecanese Questions had been waived, the experts had still been confronted with a technical question which had caused difficulties throughout the course of the previous negotiations. It has been mentioned that the arid eastern half of Kenya Colony provided pasturage for a number of nomadic Somali tribes; and while the British Government desired so to draw the new frontier as to avoid breaking up tribes or cutting them off from their water-holes, it was also anxious that, when once the new line had been fixed, it should not continue to be crossed by the tribes on either side in their seasonal migrations. Such crossings, it was feared, would lead to tribal disputes, and these would develop into vexatious controversies between the two Governments. The British Government had therefore demanded that tribes domiciled in the territory transferred to Italy should thereafter be restrained by the Italian Government from crossing to the British side of the new boundary-line, while the Italian Government had been unwilling to pledge itself to the arduous task of exercising this control. In the treaty of the 15th July, 1924, these difficulties were approached by the setting up (Art. 12) of a Mixed Anglo-Italian Commission to settle on the spot the manner in which the terms of the treaty were to be carried out, and this Commission was given discretion over the execution of those clauses (Arts. 6 and 9) in which solutions for the two difficulties were laid down. Article 6 provided that, although in general the native inhabitants of the ceded territory were automatically to acquire Italian nationality, the right of retaining their British nationality on condition of emigrating permanently to the British side of the new line should be conferred upon such a number of Somalis who were separated from their families by the new frontier as, in the judgement of the Mixed Commission, could be

1 See The Times, 7th January, 1924 (quoting the Rome correspondent of the Corriere della Sera); the Corriere, 11th January; and The Times, 25th February.

supported by the wells and pasturages in the additional triangle, terminating in the Lorian Swamp, to which Italy had now abandoned her claim. Under Article 9 the two Governments undertook that they would respectively endeavour to prevent any migration of Somalis or other natives across the new frontier. In one sector, however, the Mixed Commission was given discretion to permit tribes normally domiciled on the Italian side to cross the frontier into British territory seasonally in search of pasture. This permission, if accorded by the Mixed Commission, was to hold for a period of not less than five years and to be reconsidered at the end of that period.

The Bill providing for the execution of the Anglo-Italian Treaty of the 15th July, 1924, passed its third reading in the House of Commons on the 19th February, 1925; ratifications were exchanged on the 1st May; and the formal transfer of the territory by the British to the Italian authorities took place at Kismayu on the 29th June.2

It may be noted that on the 29th May, 1924 (that is, five days after the publication of the statement by the British Foreign Office that an agreement in principle on the cession of Jubaland had been reached between Mr. MacDonald and Signor Mussolini), it was moved by Lord Delamere in the Legislative Council of Kenya Colony that the colony was entitled to territorial compensation for the loss of Jubaland and that the Kilimanjaro district of the British mandated territory of Tanganyika should be transferred to Kenya.3 The motion was supported by the Arab members of the Council, who resented the curtailment of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, but it was withdrawn at the instance of the Governor, Sir Robert Coryndon.4

1 Having regard for the present and future reasonable requirements of the tribes or sections of tribes already there.'

2 The Times, 30th June, 1925.

3 The cession of Jubaland to Italy did not really prejudice the interests of the White settlers in the Kenya highlands, since the greater part of the ceded territory was only habitable by native pastoral tribes, while even the narrow strip of potential cotton-land along the bank of the river was not suitable for permanent occupation by a White population. The British subjects whose interests were prejudiced were not the White settlers in the highlands but the Somali nomads on the spot. On the other hand, the compensation claimed by Lord Delamere for a theoretical loss would have been of great value to the White community, since it would have added to the colony a highland area already tenanted by White settlers and capable of supporting more. Lord Delamere stated that the Kilimanjaro settlers desired the transfer a statement which, if correct, bore witness to the efficacy with which native interests in Tanganyika Territory were protected, under the Mandate, by the local British administration.

4 See The Times, 30th May, 1924.

The annexation of mandated territory would, of course, have been a breach of trust which the British Government had neither the right nor the inclination to commit.

NOTE ON THE QUESTION OF THE DODECANESE

The Dodecanese was a group of twelve islands, with a Greek population, adjoining the south-western coast of Anatolia, which had been under Ottoman sovereignty since A. D. 1522, but had been occupied by Italy during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12. In the Italo-Turkish peace treaty signed at Ouchy on the 18th October, 1912, it had been provided that the Italian occupation of the Dodecanese should continue as a pledge for the fulfilment of certain obligations undertaken by Turkey, particularly the military evacuation of the former Tripoli Vilayet (transformed by the Treaty of Ouchy into the Italian Colony of Libya). This had prevented Greece from occupying the Dodecanese during the Balkan War of 1912-13, when she occupied the other Greek Islands under Ottoman sovereignty in the Aegean with the result that these other islands were assigned to her de jure on the 13th February, 1914, by a decision of the London Conference of Ambassadors. Meanwhile Italy remained in occupation of the Dodecanese until Turkey entered the War of 1914 on the side of the Central Powers and Italy herself entered it on the side of the Entente. In the London Agreement of the 26th April, 1915, upon Article 13 of which the Italian claim to Jubaland was founded, it was also laid down in Article 8 that 'Italy shall receive entire sovereignty over the Dodecanese Islands which she is at present occupying'. This pledge was honoured by Great Britain and France in Article 122 of the abortive peace treaty with Turkey which was signed at Sèvres on the 10th August, 1920, and in Article 15 of the definitive treaty signed at Lausanne on the 24th July, 1923, by which Turkey was again compelled to transfer her sovereignty over the Dodecanese to Italy. During the Peace Conference of Paris, however, MM. Venizelos and Tittoni had arrived at an agreement by which (in return for Greek concessions to Italian desiderata in Anatolia) Italy was to cede to Greece all the lesser islands of the group forthwith and also Rhodes (the largest of the islands) within fifteen years of the date when Great Britain ceded Cyprus to Greece, if that event were to occur. On the 10th August, 1920, a further Italo-Greek instrument modifying this agreement was signed at Sèvres simultaneously with the general (abortive) peace treaty with Turkey and the tripartite treaty between Great Britain, France and Italy recognizing French and Italian zones of influence on the Anatolian mainland. The Italo-Greek agreement was still unratified, however, when the two other instruments of the same date were voided by the Turkish victory over the Greeks in Anatolia in the summer of 1922, which made it inevitable that the Principal Allied Powers, as well as Greece, should revise their terms to Turkey. On the 8th October, 1922, the Italian Government accordingly denounced the Italo-Greek agreement regarding the Dodecanese, on the ground that the three instruments signed on the 10th August, 1920, were interrelated and that the lapse of two of them invalidated the third. Greece protested against this on the ground that the

1

tripartite treaty, by the lapse of which Italy was damnified, had nothing to do with Greece, who had not been a party to it. On the 14th October, 1922, the British Government appears likewise to have protested 1 to the Italian Government at this denunciation having been made without previous consultation with the other Principal Allied Powers. The British position was that the question of the Dodecanese concerned the Allies as a whole and not Italy and Greece exclusively, and that this contention had been admitted by Italy herself. It was from this time onwards that the British Government insisted on treating the question of Jubaland as specifically interrelated with that of the Dodecanese.

(ii) The Defining of the Boundary between French Equatorial Africa and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (1919-24).3

In order to put an end to the controversy over their respective spheres of influence, which had culminated in the dangerous Fashoda Affair of 1898, the French and British Governments signed in Paris, on the 14th June, 1898, a convention which was afterwards completed by a declaration signed in London on the 21st March, 1899. In a general way, these instruments assigned the Nile Basin to the British Sphere and the Congo and Chad Basins to the French Sphere; but for a considerable distance the boundary between the two spheres was equated with the existing political frontier between the native states of Darfur (in the British Sphere) and Wadai (in the French Sphere). This frontier was itself indeterminate, and in 1899 neither principality was under the effective control of the Power whose claim was recognized by the other party to the two diplomatic instruments above-mentioned. Wadai, however, was occupied by the French in 1910, while Darfur was incorporated de facto as well as de jure in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1916; and accordingly a supplementary convention was signed in Paris on the 8th September, 1919, in which the boundary was laid down with greater exactitude. In the declaration of 1899, paragraph 4, provision had been made for the eventual delimitation of the boundary on the spot; and, after the ratifications of the convention of 1919 had been exchanged, an Anglo-French Delimitation Commission spent a year (October 1921-September 1922) in surveying the frontier zone, 1 See H. P. C., vol. vi, p. 37.

2 See a statement made by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald in the House of Commons on the 25th February, 1924.

3 See The Times, 11th January; Le Temps, 29th February, 1924.

That is, the portion of the Congo Basin on the right bank of the Congo, Ubangui, and Mbomo Rivers, the remainder of the Congo Basin being included in the Congo Free State, which afterwards became a Belgian colony.