ground that the assignee had not obtained the leave of the Court for entering into the arbitration. In rejecting this contention, the Court observed that under the law the agreement was binding on Mr. Wyld even though the leave of the Court was not obtained and that therefore he was not entitled to take this objection based on the informality of the submission as he had himself acted on it. This decision is clearly of no assistance to the appellants because there was a valid and subsisting submission, on which the jurisdiction ofthe arbitrators to hear the dispute was complete, and that was not affected by the failure of the assignee to obtain the requisite leave, because that was a matter between him and the Court. But here if the agreement dated September 7,1955, is void then there was no submission which was alive on which the arbitrators could act and the proceedings before them would be wholly without jurisdiction. If there had been another arbitration agreement apart from and independent of CI.14 of the contract dated September 7, 1955, it might have been possible to sustain the proceedings before the arbitrators as referable to that agreement. But none such has been set up or proved in the present case. All that is alleged is that the respondents acquiesced in the proceedings. But what confers jurisdiction on the arbitrators to hear and decide a dispute is an arbitration agreement as defined in S.2(a) of the Arbitration Act and where there is no such agreement, there is an initial want of jurisdiction which cannot be cured by acquiescence. It may also be mentioned that the decision in (1860) 30U Bey 10 has been understood as an authority for the position that when one of the parties to the submission is under a disability that will not be aground on which the other party can dispute the award if he was aware of it. Vide Russel on Arbitration, 16th Edition, 320. We are therefore unable to
