Dreams Born and Shattered 357Austria to coordinate their customs policies. Th e plan was loudly claimed
to be a violation on Austria’s part of a treaty commitment of 1922 not to
“alienate its in de pen dence.” As it happened, the two governments decided,
for various po liti cal reasons, not to proceed with the initiative. But the advi-
sory opinion was issued nonetheless, in which a sharply divided Court ruled
that the plan did constitute a breach of the 1922 treaty. Th e German and
Austrian governments nonetheless touted the closeness of the vote as a moral
victory. And in some quarters, the Court lost prestige, on the belief that the
judges had voted largely on po liti cal, rather than legal, grounds.
Mixed- claims Commissions
Th e World Court did not have anything like a monopoly on international
litigation during the period. Th e interwar era was also something of a golden
age for mixed- claims commissions and arbitrations. Th e peace treaties with
the defeated Central powers made provision for a class of claims to be adju-
dicated by mixed- claims tribunals. Th ese were claims by Allied nationals
for losses fl owing from sequestration mea sures and similar actions by the
defeated powers at the outset of the confl ict. Th is primarily aff ected Allied
nationals who were resident in those states or who had investments there.
More important was the mixed- claims commission agreed between the
United States and Germany in 1922. Th is was more wide- ranging in scope
than the other ones because it was designed to deal with all losses suff ered
by American civilians— thereby becoming a substitute for the reparations
arrangement in the Versailles Treaty. Among the more prominent claims
heard by this tribunal were those arising out of Germany’s sinking of the
passenger liner Lusitania in 1915. But it decided over twenty thousand other
claims as well. Over seven thousand awards were made by this panel, total-
ing over $181 million.
In mixed- claims commissions, Mexico played a leading role. It entered
into two mixed- claims arrangements with the United States in 1923. One
concerned “special” claims (as they were called) of alleged injuries to Amer-
ican nationals from the revolutionary disturbances in Mexico in 1910– 20.
Th e other dealt with “general” claims of alleged injuries of all sorts by Mex-
ico to Americans, as well as by the United States to Mexicans. Th e special-
claims commission was not a success. Although over three thousand claims