Whereas, the note ([Annex C] p. 47) was as follows:

The Egyptian Government is disposed:

(1) To give official instructions to its lawyers that the affair shall be pleaded from the time when the courts will again take up their work without any delay.

(2) To make formal acknowledgment to the Government of the United States that this Government declares today that Salem has possessed American nationality without interruption; but desires to remark that in practice Salem has not been treated in Egypt by the American authorities as having enjoyed that nationality without interruption and that he himself has declared himself at one time as an American and at another as possessing another nationality.

I understand Mr. de Bellefonds' little coquetry, to which he is fully entitled, when he was anxious just now to explain, in guarding the interests resting on his hands, that he was the author of this note, since I do not believe that by this second point-allow me to say so-the Egyptian Government was conceding much to the Government of the United States. It was just notifying its disposition to deliver an official certificate to the Government of the United States, that Government which declares today (viz, the United States) that Salem did possess the American nationality without interruption.

From a diplomatic point of view, I cannot see that this could have meant in the least a resignation of the position the Royal Government had occupied hitherto. Seeing a misunderstanding ready to spring up in the mind of the Minister of the United States, which may already have caused him to write or to cable to Washington, stating that the Egyptian Government was submitting to Salem's having been an American citizen, throughout, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Loutfi el Sayed, immediately endeavors to set things straight. You will find this letter on page 48 of Annex C:

MY DEAR MINISTER:

I have received your letter of June 26 by means of which you returned to me the note reproducing the conversation that I had the pleasure of having with you on the 25th of June regarding the

Salem case. It seems to me, by reading your letter, that perhaps the declaration which I made to you on the subject of Salem's nationality was not exactly understood.

That's excellent diplomatic style.

I said that the Egyptian Government is ready to give due notice to the Government of the United States that the latter

These words are underlined in the Minister's letter. I asked Mr. de Bellefonds about it, who told me that it was the same in the original.

that the latter Government declares today that Salem possessed without interruption American nationality-but that the Egyptian Government [and so forth].

The American Government is given an official certification of its declaration, but nothing is being accepted. Therefore, no modification takes place with reference to the standpoint that had been adopted so clearly and concisely in the preceding correspondence.

Under these conditions, the Minister of the United States, by way of a letter of July 8, 1929, asks precisely, in case Salem, adopting the motion of the Egyptian Government, should bring in a civil appeal-the last paragraph of the letter, I shall beg you to compare, Gentlemen, on page 50:

I cannot refrain, therefore, from expressing some surprise that in the statement accompanying Your Excellency's last letter there appears to be a certain hesitancy to furnish me with a clear and unequivocal recognition of Mr. Salem's American citizenship.

This also, as I was just saying with reference to a preceding text, is excellent diplomatic style:

By the foregoing I do not mean in any sense to question the bona fides of the presently considered proposal for the settlement of this case but rather to express the opinion that it would be entirely consistent with the bases of that proposal were such recognition to be stated in advance and a clear assurance furnished me that, should Mr. Salem institute the suggestion requête civile proceedings before the Mixed Court of Appeal, no question would be raised by the Egyptian Government as to his right to come before that Court as an American citizen in good standing.

The

Now, Gentlemen, the question is concisely put. Royal Government answers, in the actual contest, "So far as we are concerned, Salem, as a local subject, cannot be considered as having validly been naturalized as an American. We consider him a local subject. He is no American. But nevertheless, since, in order to settle matters with the utmost fairness and as simply as possible, we are by mutual agreement between the American and the Royal Governments to induce Salem to employ the means of civil appeal, if, on this occasion, he will appear before the Mixed Court, it remains certain that no exception will be opposed to him, arising from the fact that he is not an American." Of course, it would be absolutely unjust to bring Salem into court, to give him the opportunity to give his proofs, and then to tell him that the forum is closed. That would mean taking away with one hand what has been given with the other. "To give and to hold back nullifies." This primordial adage of justice is the basis of the Royal Government's suggestion to make a civil appeal. Offering this means to Salem in order to maintain his claim before the Mixed Court, it could never stop him by an exception arising from his eventually not being proven an American, but a local subject; and therefore the competence of the Mixed Court would not be given in his case.

You will remark that this means a concession made by the Royal Government to the Government of the United States, a concession that has but one aim: To permit the civil appeal to be an effective means of giving Salem the opportunity to declare that he was prevented from being sufficiently explicit before his judges, and by means of the civil appeal to submit his case to their judgment without being stopped by a preliminary exception. Salem must be able to appear before the Mixed Court without its incompetence being opposed to him on account of his being a local subject.

The Tribunal surely has not lost sight of the fact that in the course of yesterday's deliberation, I ventured to state that the question of nationality might present itself

under different angles. It might be a preliminary question of competence of the tribunal, whether mixed or international; but it might appear in a different light as well.

If in international law, the responsibility of a country is at stake for having neglected its duties with regard to international law, the question of nationality may then be raised, not as a preliminary one of competence to be examined by the tribunal called into the case, but as a gist to be solved in order to make sure whether international responsibility which is pretended to exist is well founded, according to the principles of international law. The tribunal, therefore, investigates into the problem, not only ratione materiae, with regard to the facts that would prove a contravention to international law, but also ratione personae, because the contravention to international law must have a definite state as an object that might consider itself offended in the person of an individual whom, according to international law, it would have the legitimate right to consider as its ressortissant.

These distinctions are made in the diplomatic correspondence of the Egyptian Government, which has at once the right feeling about them; and the Minister of the United States, I must confess, understands them-understands them exceedingly well-and in this last paragraph practically says the following (Annex C, p. 50): "You still make your reservations. All right; but give me at least the assurance that you will not oppose to Salem the means you might employ to prevent him from appealing to this court, by saying he was a local subject and therefore not entitled to mixed jurisdiction."

Under such conditions, and only under such, the Egyptian Government is ready to adopt the point of view of the Government of the United States, to enable Salem to bring in a requête civile. But when trying to transgress this first paragraph, the Minister of the United States insists and, in an aide-mémoire of July 23, 1929 (p. 51),

proposes (at the end of the aide-mémoire, p. 52-the text is not English, but French) to the Egyptian Government to adhere to the following principles: "In order to obtain a new judgment in the Salem case, the Egyptian Government will admit as a fact Salem's uninterrupted American nationality."

What does the Royal Government answer? In a letter of March 20, 1930, signed by His Excellency the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wacif Boutros Ghali, from which I shall only read paragraph 4 (p. 60), it explains:

As regards paragraph 12, relative to the proposed draft submitted to Your Excellency on November 29, 1929, the meaning of this draft should be interpreted by reference to Your Excellency's communication under date of July 8, 1929, in which Your Excellency expressed the desire to obtain assurance that if Salem had recourse to requête civile, the Egyptian Government would not dispute his American citizenship. A little later, in an aide-mémoire of July 23, Your Excellency proposed that this assurance be given in terms which, in the opinion of legal counsels of the Egyptian Government, might influence in advance the judgment to be rendered on the case. The draft note sent to Your Excellency on November 29, 1929, had as its object to give, on the part of the Egyptian Government, the assurance which had been requested by Your Excellency in your communication of July 8, but it did not mean that the Egyptian Government intended to adhere to the terms of the aide-mémoire of July 23.

I am pleased to hope that in view of these enlightenments, no misunderstanding will remain as to the meaning of the Egyptian Government's suggestion relative to recourse to requête civile, to be exercised by Salem against the sentence of April 22, 1926. It was a question, in the intention of the Egyptian Government, of getting Salem to take the normal course through judiciary channels which would have permitted of his submitting his claim to the Court with all arguments and proofs in support thereof, just as if the decree of which he complains had never existed; but the Egyptian Government did not in any way intend to bar itself from presenting, to oppose the claim of George Salem, any means of defense as to the merits of the case in dispute, by engaging beforehand to consider itself as responsible toward Salem. The Court would have decided sovereignly, just as in any other litigation, the question of responsibility and eventually that of damages.