e 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 Council, issued an appeal to the majority and minority populations of Upper Silesia in connection to a problem that emerged in the area: it called upon the majority to recognise that it was not in its interest to oppress the minority, and it called upon the minority to acknowledge that it had real interests in loyal co-operation with the government. For the comprehensive realisation of the minorities treaties, said Henderson, were of decisive importance for the maintenance of peace. Should this system break down or the trust in it be shaken, it would entail unforeseeable consequences. The conciliatory, prophetic speech of the British foreign secretary found response all over Europe but it was not enough to change the course of events.
1933 brought a fundamental change: the National Socialists came to power in Germany on 30 January, following which the minority protection system had little chance to survive. This became evident when, in May 1933, the petition of Franz Bernheim concerning the Jewish population of Upper Silesia was examined. Bernheim enumerated German laws and decrees that forbid to "non-Aryan" clerks, lawyers, notaries, and doctors to exercise their profession, moreover drastically limited the admission of Jews to schools and universities. Since the text of these documents ran counter to the provisions of the Geneva Convention on Upper Silesia (1922), Bernheim asked the Council of the League of Nations to implement measures or take actions under Article 147 of the Convention in order to prevent the application of the laws and decrees in concern in Upper Silesia. All that the German representative remarked in his reply was that the internal legislation of Germany, naturally, could not impair its international obligations. In the case the Geneva Convention was violated in Upper Silesia, that could be but a mistake that derived from the erroneous interpretation of the laws on the part of administrative officers. The Council of the League of Nations had no weapons to retaliate for this reply.
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