31 OCTOBER 1931, Page 3

Equal Justice A minor case in which the Permanent Court

of Inter- national Justice has just given judgement deserves notice for one particular reason. The question at issue bore on the eternal disprite between Poland and Lithuania and involved 'a decision on the • claim, not admitted by Lithuania, that the closed frontier between that country and Poland should be opened at least to certain types of international traffic. The Court gave a unanimous decision in Lithuania's favour, which means that the Polish judge on the bench voted with the rest of his colleagues against the interests of Poland. That, of course, is not the first instance of the kind. In the dispute, for example, between Great Britain and France over the Tunis-Morocco decrees, the French judge. joined in the unanimous verdict in Britain's favour. These cases are worth noting, in view of the fears originally entertained that the Court would be incapable of emancipating itself from political influences, and the tendency—quite unjustified—in various quarters to regard the recent Austro-German Customs Union verdict as some confirmation of those fears.