Case of Oscar Chinn

Grave and reverend seniors in their black silk gowns and dainty lace jabots are the 15 judges of the Permanent Court of International Justice at the Hague, better known as the World Court. It is their privilege to meet in one of the pleasantest, most impressive of courtrooms, the great Peace Palace built by Andrew Carnegie in 1913. To underwrite their deliberations all member nations pay, through the League of Nations, annual sums totaling about $500,000 (each judge's salary is $18,000 a year), and are expected to lay before the court for final settlement their gravest international problems.

Last week the eleven judges who normally make a quorum of the court swished to their comfortable leather chairs, looked approvingly at the crisp new blotters, clean pens, gleaming inkwells and clear glasses of water before them, then glanced at the carefully printed memorandum of cases pending. From the register they learned that one of the next cases to which they must bend their minds was the unfortunate plight of Oscar Chinn.

Sallow Oscar Chinn, a British subject, operates a small and grimy paddle-wheel steamer on the Congo. Trader Chinn's unlovely craft, which he claimed belongs to UNATRA, Union Nationale des Transports, a Belgian registered stock company, was halted by Belgian agents on its way down to Leopoldville. The Belgian Government had promulgated a new code of Congo regulations. The agents tried to apply them. But Trader Chinn had a sound practical sense of international law. He sued for damages.

International rules for navigation of the Congo were agreed to by the 1885 Conference of Berlin which provided freedom of navigation for all signatory powers, and prohibited differential river tolls in favor of any one. In what way Belgium had violated the constitutional rights of Oscar Chinn only he and the sober judges of the World Court knew last week.

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