 taken place indeed, it would have been most proper from purely a legal aspect. However, the Council could not impose sanctions, so it contacted the state in concern prior to the final decision and requested information on how it planned to settle the situation described in the petition. If the Council deemed the answer of the government acceptable, it was accepted. There was only one sanction to threaten the given state with: according to Article 16 of the Covenant, it could be declared to be no longer a Member of the League by a vote of the Council.
In the case any difference of opinion as to questions concerning minorities arose between the given government and any member of the Council, it was to be held a dispute of an international character, which, under Article 14 of the Covenant, could be referred to the Permanent Court of International Justice. The decision of the Permanent Court was to be considered final and has the same force and effect as an award under Article 13 of the Covenant. The parties were obliged to comply with the award, but the League had no instrument to force the parties to do so, unless we consider the power of international public opinion such an instrument. Under Article 14 of the Covenant, the Council was entitled to refer a dispute or a question to the Permanent Court of International Justice for an advisory opinion. The avis consultatif was not binding but the weight of the court and public opinion did have an influence on the final position of the Council.
I have attempted to present how the legal framework of minority protection evolved through the resolutions of the Council and the Assembly of the League of Nations. During the operation of the minority protection system, however, "procédure écrite" was completed by "procédure non écrite", which referred to the actual procedures of certain institutions and to those unwritten rules that accompanied the petitions starting from their submission until a decision was reached on them or they were dismissed. The working practices of the minority committees during the preliminary procedure, the relations they maintained with the states concerned, and the way they made them an active participant of the decision-making process on the petition, furthermore the procedure before the Council, all exerted a significant influence on the effectiveness of the system. The prime mover of events was, however, the minority department of the Secretariat of the League of Nations. During the elaboration of the rules of procedure, that is, the resolutions presented above, the Secretariat played an important role through the involvement of its various (political, legal) departments. The work of its minority department had a major role in the elaboration of unwritten procedural law, and the working practices.
6. 1930-1939: A Period of Inertia and Political Debates
All structures built by humans have their sour points. It is around those points that the signs of some imminent crisis manifest, and it is around them that the symptoms of some latent disease become visible. There is every reason to consider the minority protection system such a point in the case of the political regimes and the League of Nations in the period between the world wars. Accordingly, the imminent crisis of the 1930s cast its shadow to the minority protection negotiations of the League of Nations already in 1929. In the following section I attempt to present the path that led to the definitive disruption of the delicate balance that underlined the minority protection procedure.
The history of the minority protection system after 1930 can be described in a few words. The 6th Committee of the Assembly discussed the rules of procedure annually between 1930 and 1934. Initiatives were launched first on the part of Germany and then on the part of Hungary. 1931 and 1932 went by relatively peacefully: no significant proposals were submitted and the already established rules of procedure were confirmed. One positive initiative was launched on the part of the English. Henderson, then president of the 