JUDGMENT No. 12.-UPPER SILESIA (MINORITY SCHOOLS) 25 cannot, in the Court's opinion, justify a different conclusion, since there is no rule laying down that consent must take the form of an express declaration rather than that of acts conclusively establishing it. gf, in a special case, the Respondent has, by an express L declaration, indicated his desire to obtain a decision on the merits and his intention to abstain from raising the question of jurisdiction, it seems clear that he cannot, later on in the proceedings, go back upon that declaration. This would not hold good only if the conditions under which the declaration had been made were such as to invalidate the expression of intention, or if the Applicant had, in the subsequent proceedings, essentially modified the aspect of the case, so that the consent, given on the basis of the original claim, could not reasonably be held to apply to the claim in the form which it now assurqes. And, in the Court's opinion, there is no reason for dealing other~isewith cases in which the intention of submitting a matter to the Court for decision has been implicitly shown by the fact of arguing the merits without 1 reseMng the question of jurisdictio~ The Respondent seems also to share this view, a fact which appears from the manner in which he justifies, in his Rejoinder, the raising of his objection at this stage in the proceedings only. He bases his objection on the fact that the German Government in its Reply discards, as irrelevant to the case, Article 69 of the Geneva Convention ; this fact, in his opinion, did not emerge so clearly from the German Case. The Court, however, does not consider that this reason is sufficient to justify the withdrawal of the consent already implicitly given. The Applicant, in his Reply, has not altered his submission in which he only cites, in support of his first two contentions, articles of the Convention following Article 72. The Counter-Case itself shows that the Agent for the Polish Government had already bestowed attention to this circumstance and that he might very well have raised the question of jurisdiction in his Counter-Case if he had wished. Instead of doing so, the Polish Government, in its CounterCase, merely lays stress on the importance of Article 69 for the purposes of the decision on the merits of the suit, and