30 AEGEAN SEA (JUDGMENT) pacific settlement of the inter-war period, and in the proceedings of the League of Nations connected with the drafting of the Locarno Protocol. The propositions which they advanced on the basis of that evidence were, briefly, as follows. First, the reason for the appearance of expressions such as "territorial status", "territorial integrity", "territorial situation", "maintenance of frontiers" in treaties of the period, whether in the context of reservations to pacific settlement provisions, or of territorial guarantees, was a prevailing apprehension of attempts to modify the post-war settlements. Secondly, although the actual expressions used might Vary, their meaning was essentially the same, namely territorial situations or régimes established by treaties. Thirdly, when the expression "territorial status" occurred in reservations to treaties of pacific settlement, what the States had in mind was "disputes which were likely to arise out of territorial claims by neighbours dissatisfied with existing solutions". Indeed, it wzs said that the term "territorial status" in those reservations was simply "a 'code-word' for intangibility of the frontiers and territorial statuses established by the international instruments in force". The general conclusion which the Greek Government then asked the Court to draw from that evidence was that: "Everything that is known of the contemporary understanding of such terms as 'territorial status', 'territorial situation' and 'territorial integrity' in the 1920s indicates that these expressions are to be given a restrictive interpretation limired to the maintenance of the status quo estabfished by treaties, normafly as the result of post-war settlement." (Emphasis added.) 73. In the view of the Court, the historical evidence may justifiably be said to show that in the period in question the motive which led States to include in treaties provisions regarding "territorial status" was, in general, to protect themselves against possible attempts to modify territorial settlements established by the peace treaties. But it does not follow that they intended those provisions to be confined to questions connected with the revision of such settlements. Any modification of a territorial "status" or "situation" or "frontier" is unpalatable to a State; and the strong probability is that a State which had recourse to a reservation of disputes relating to territorial status, or the like, intended it to be quite general. Article 39 of the General Act, it is true, was designed to regulate the formulation of reservations and to exclude vague or subjective reservations. But in making express mention of disputes relating to territorial status as an example of disputes concerning a clearly specified subject-matter, Article 39 said nothing of this example being exclusively directed against attempts to revise the territorial settlements established by the peace treaties.