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25 of the Palestine mandate presented by the British Government to the Council of the League on September 16, 1922.

The memorandum was approved by the Council subject to the decision taken at its meeting in London on July 24, 1922, with regard to the coming into force of the Palestine and Syrian mandates.

Memorandum by the British Representative.

1. Article 25 of the mandate for Palestine provides as follows:"In the territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine as ultimately determined, the Mandatory shall be entitled, with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations, to postpone or withhold application of such provisions of this mandate as he may consider inapplicable to the existing local conditions, and to make such provision for the administration of the territories as he may consider suitable to those conditions, provided no action shall be taken which is inconsistent with the provisions of Articles 15, 16, and 18.”

2. In pursuance of the provisions of this Article, His Majesty's Government invite the Council to pass the following resolution :—

"The following provisions of the mandate for Palestine are not applicable to the territory known as Trans-Jordan, which comprises all territory lying to the east of a line drawn from a point two miles west of the town of Akaba on the Gulf of that name up the centre of the Wady Araba, Dead Sea and River Jordan to its junction with the River Yarmuk; thence up the centre of that river to the Syrian Frontier.

Preamble.-Recitals 2 and 3.

ARTICLE 2.-The words "placing the country under such political administration and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble, and.”

ARTICLE 4.

ARTICLE 6.

ARTICLE 7.-The sentence "There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine." ARTICLE 11.-The second sentence of the first paragraph and the second paragraph.

ARTICLE 13.

ARTICLE 14.

ARTICLE 22.

ARTICLE 23.

In the application of the mandate to Trans-Jordan, the action which, in Palestine, is taken by the Administration of the latter country, will be taken by the Administration of Trans-Jordan under the general supervision of the Mandatory.

3. His Majesty's Government accept full responsibility as Mandatory for Trans-Jordan, and undertake that such provision as may be made for the administration of that territory in accordance with Article 25 of the mandate shall be in no way inconsistent with those provisions of the mandate which are not by this resolution declared inapplicable,

IV. DESPATCH TO HIS MAJESTY'S REPRESENTATIVES ABROAD RESPECTING THE STATUS OF Egypt.

CIRCULAR DESPATCH SENT BY TELEGRAPH TO HIS MAJESTY'S REPRESENTATIVES AT PARIS, BERLIN, WASHINGTON, ROME, MADRID, TOKYO, BRUSSELS, RIO DE JANEIRO, CHRISTIANIA, STOCKHOLM, THE HAGUE, COPENHAGEN, ATHENS, LISBON, Belgrade, and Berne, and BY BAG TO HIS MAJESTY'S REPRESENTATIVES AT BUENOS AIRES, VIENNA, LA PAZ, SOFIA, SANTIAGO, PEKING, Bogotá, Panama, Havaná, Prague, LIMA, RIGA, HELSINGFORS, GUATEMALA, BUDAPEST, MEXICO CITY, TEHRAN, WARSAW, BANGKOK, MONTE VIDEO, THE VATICAN AND CARACAS.

FOREIGN OFFICE, March 15, 1922.

SIR, His Majesty's Government, with the approval of Parliament, have decided to terminate the protectorate declared over Egypt on the 18th December, 1914, and to recognise her as an independent sovereign State. In informing the Government to which you are accredited of this decision you should communicate the following notification :—

"When the peace and prosperity of Egypt were menaced in December, 1914, by the intervention of Turkey in the Great War in alliance with the Central Powers, His Majesty's Government terminated the suzerainty of Turkey over Egypt, took the country under their protection and declared it to be a British protectorate.

"The situation is now changed. Egypt has emerged from the war prosperous and unscathed, and His Majesty's Government, after grave consideration and in accordance with their traditional policy, have decided to terminate the protectorate by a declaration in which they recognise Egypt as an independent sovereign State, while preserving for future agreements between Egypt and themselves certain matters in which the interests and obligations of the British Empire are specially involved. Pending such agreements, the status quo as regards these matters will remain unchanged.

"The Egyptian Government will be at liberty to re-establish a Ministry for Foreign Affairs and thus to prepare the way for the diplomatic and consular representation of Egypt abroad.

"Great Britain will not in future accord protection to Egyptians in foreign countries, except in so far as may be desired by the Egyptian Government and pending the representation of Egypt in the country concerned.

"The termination of the British protectorate over Egypt involves, however, no change in the status quo as regards the position of other Powers in Egypt itself.

"The welfare and integrity of Egypt are necessary to the peace and safety of the British Empire, which will therefore always maintain as an essential British interest the special relations between itself and Egypt long recognised by other Governments. These special relations are defined in the declaration recognising Egypt as an independent sovereign State. His Majesty's Government have laid them down as matters in which the rights and interests of the British Empire are vitally involved,

and will not admit them to be questioned or discussed by any other Power. In pursuance of this principle, they will regard as an unfriendly act any attempt at interference in the affairs of Egypt by another Power, and they will consider any aggression against the territory of Egypt as an act to be repelled with all the means at their command."

I am, etc.,

CURZON OF KEDLESTON.

OBITUARY

OF

EMINENT PERSONS DECEASED IN 1922.

JANUARY.

1. Sir Thomas Sutherland, G.C.M.G., whose age was 87, was born and educated in Aberdeen. Entering the London office of the P. and O. Steamship Company at the age of 19, he had, by 1873, risen to the position of managing director, and by 1881 to that of chairman of the company. His great ability was recognised when he was serving the company at Hong-Kong in 1854, and by the time he was 26 he was appointed superintendent of their China and Japan agencies. He was one of the founders of the Hong-Kong docks, and was also one of the founders and first vice-chairman of the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. The agreement made between the British shipowners and the newly formed Suez Canal Company in 1883 was largely due to his instrumentality. He ultimately became a director of the Canal, and was at his death senior vice-president of the Canal Company. He retired from his chairmanship of the P. and O. Company in 1914. From 1884 to 1900 he sat in the House of Commons as member for Greenock, first as a Liberal, then as a Liberal-Unionist. His wife and both his sons predeceased him.

2. Senator Boies Penrose, United States Senator for Pennsylvania for nearly twenty-five years, and of recent years the most powerful force in the Republican Party, was born in 1860 of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in Philadelphia. By profession a barrister, he devoted his energies almost entirely to politics, which he entered at the age of 24 as a Radical. Two years later he came forward suddenly as a reactionary, and an ultra-Conservative he remained to the end.

5. Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great Antarctic explorer, famous as the holder of the Farthest South record-a record broken later by Amundsen and Scott-was born at Kilkee, County Kildare, in 1874. The son of a doctor, he was intended to adopt the same calling, but after completing his education at Dulwich College (the family had removed to London in 1885) he was allowed to follow his natural bent and went to sea. He served on various large ocean lines, and during the Boer War joined the Royal Naval Reserve. In 1901 his persistence gained him the appointment of fourth officer to Scott's Antarctic expedition to the South Pole, in the Discovery. The Pole was not reached, but Shackleton gained great experience, and in 1907, after an interval spent at home as Secretary to the Scottish Geographical Society, he planned an expedition of his own and started for the South Pole in the Nimrod. He achieved a record by planting the Union Jack within 100 miles of the Pole. A further expedition in 1914 met with persistent ill-luck, and was eventually abandoned after the rescue of a number of his party from Elephant Island.

In September, 1921, he started on the Quest to explore the Southern Antarctic, but he died suddenly when his ship was just off South Georgia. The expedition was continued under the leadership of Mr. Frank Wild. Shackleton left two sons and a daughter. His books on "The Heart of the Antarctic" and "South" bear witness to his daring spirit, organising capacity, and power of leadership, as much as to his literary ability.

8. James Law, who died at the age of 83, one of the proprietors of the Scotsman, was a newspaper manager worthy of note. He was the business manager of this paper for over sixty-four years, and was responsible for introducing successfully into its Edinburgh printing office the rotary web machine already in use by The Times. He was a man of exceptional vitality, judgment, and organising ability. He first became prominent in newspaper circles by his persistent advocacy of the granting of telegraphic facilities for news reporting.

- Sir William Matthews, K.C.M.G., a harbour engineer of worldwide repute, was born in 1844 and entered the office of his father, who was a civil engineer in practice at Penzance. In 1864 work brought him into touch with Sir John Coode, whose London office he entered and in whose firm he ultimately became a partner. Besides the harbours of Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Ceylon, Penang, Singapore, and Hong-Kong, he designed the Dover Naval Harbour, the harbour of refuge at Peterhead, on the Aberdeen coast, and, among his more recent works, the railway pier at Folkestone. In 1907 he was elected President of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was unmarried.

10. Prince Shigenobu Okuma, a Japanese statesman, was born in 1838. Too often ahead of public opinion to maintain success as a political leader, he nevertheless achieved a world-wide reputation owing to his versatile genius and energy. His ministerial career started in 1873, from which year he was until 1881 Vice-Minister, then Minister of Finance, during a period of great financial difficulties and covering the Satsuma Rebellion. In the latter year his advocacy of representative Government caused his resignation. He organised a progressive party and built and endowed a college near Tokyo for the furtherance of his political aim, Party Government. This college is now known as the greatest exponent of all phases of Japanese thought.

He returned to office in 1888 as Minister of Foreign Affairs, but his policy of treaty revision aroused opposition, and an attack on his life resulted in the loss of one of his legs. In 1896 he filled the same position under a non-Party Ministry, which lasted only fifteen months, and in 1898 he joined hands with the Liberals and became Prime Minister of a Joint Progressist and Liberal Cabinet, which collapsed after five months. His party split, and in 1907 he resigned its leadership. He held the Prime Ministership again from 1914 to 1916, then finally retired into private life. He was made a Count in 1887, a Marquis in 1916, and a prince in 1918.

Edgar Bundy, A.R.A., was born in 1862, and elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1915. His paintings include a number of portraits, but he was chiefly known as a painter of subject and historical pictures which were widely reproduced. Many of his best-known works are connected with the history of British sea-power. He was a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water-Colours and of other artistic societies.

11. Charles Hannan, the dramatist and novelist, published his first novel, "A Swallow's Wing," in 1887. His first play, "The Setting of the Sun," was a one-act piece and was produced by Wilson Barrett in 1892. Since then he had written a number of plays and novels.

The Right Hon. Thomas Lough, who represented West Islington in the House of Commons for twenty-six years as a Liberal (1892-1918),

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