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purpose and with well-defined rights and duties to the other members of the Organisation and to the Organisation itself. The decisions of the International Labour Conference, its Draft Conventions and Recommendations, are not the addition or the multiplication of the provisions of the various systems of national legislation. They embody an agreement on the part of the nations of the world in meeting assembled that such and such principles should be enforced as the common standard of the world. In some countries this common standard has clearly been reached, in others it has perhaps even been surpassed. In most, in all probability, it is still far from attainment. As representing the free consensus of the peoples of the world the agreement which is embodied in the Draft Conventions and Recommendations of the Conference is genuinely international.

We must now extend our examination to consider, in some detail, the claims of the International Labour Organisation, in its various organs and institutions, to be regarded as genuinely international. The Conference, as we have already seen, is international primarily in the sense that all the States Members of the Organisation-to the number of 56-have the right to participate on an equal basis in its work. Now a Conference is conceivable, organised on these lines, the results of whose work would be in no sense genuinely international. International Conferences in the past have frequently separated after having adopted with hardly any alteration a draft prepared by one State, either the most powerful, or the most far-sighted, or the most diplomatic. In such cases the right of the Conference to be regarded as genuinely international is open to serious doubt. Judged by this criterion, the internationalism of the Conference is above dispute. This is largely due to the carefulness of the preliminary preparation made by a completely international body, the International Labour Office.

Let us glance at the various stages of this process of preparation, with a view to ascertaining how far the desiderata of internationalism are satisfied. The agenda of the Conference is determined by the Governing Body of the Office. It is open to any member of the Govern

* Part XIII, article 400.

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dding Body, Government, workers, or employers, to submit to the Governing Body subjects for inclusion on the agenda of the Conference, but no question has any chance of finding a place on the agenda unless there is genuine international agreement that it is a question which is worth discussing, and which ought to be discussed, internationally. When a decision has once been reached as to the agenda of the Conference, the work of preparation is taken in hand by the Office.

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In the first place, the Office collects information readily available on the question. On the basis of this information it prepares and submits to the Conference a report on the law and practice on the question together with a draft questionnaire. The Conference explores the possibility of elaborating a Draft Convention or Recommendation on the question at issue. If it decides in the affirmative, it draws up the questionnaire to be sent to the Governments. In this document detailed questions are asked as to the attitude of the Governments on various aspects of the problem. When the Office receives the replies to the questionnaire, it proceeds to draw up a general report in which the replies of the Governments are quoted in extenso. At the end of the report the Office incorporates a draft for a Convention or Recommendation prepared by the Office as a basis for discussion, and drawn up in the light of the answers received. In certain cases the Office also prepares what is known as a technical report giving objective information with regard to the matter under consideration.

The significance of this procedure, from the standpoint of reaching a genuinely international agreement, is twofold. In the first place, the delegates come to the Conference with all the facts on the particular problem to be discussed already collected by an absolutely impartial body, the International Labour Office, and placed at the disposal of all the delegates, and indeed of the world. They are further placed in possession, by the same means, of the tentative or provisional views of the various Governments as to the attitude which they will adopt at the Conference. That these expressions of policy are usually stated by Governments in a tentative form, with full reservations of the right to alter that

attitude at the Conference, is of the greatest importance. It means that when the delegates meet at the Conference, they know the probable attitude that the other delegates will adopt, but this attitude is rarely defined before the Conference in such a rigid form that the amour propre of the particular country is engaged to support it. And this is a great gain. Policies are confronted when they are still in the making, while they are still plastic, while modification in the interest of international agreement is still possible.

Consider what the position would have been if this system of preparation had not been provided for. Each country would have begun and would have continued to study the particular problem, for example, the prohibition of the use of white lead in painting, without regard to the similar study being made, probably along divergent lines, by other States. The various States Members would consider this problem with initial differences of outlook and divergences of interest. If the problem were to be worked out independently in each State, without any contact with other States and without any knowledge of what was being done by them, the initial divergences would almost certainly develop and increase. In the end each Government delegate would come to the Conference with a policy definitely formulated, a policy which it would be difficult for him to modify because the prestige of his Government would appear to be engaged in it. In such conditions a solution would be difficult, because if any agreement were to be reached Governments would be forced to retreat from positions definitely occupied, and the conclusion of such agreements would be apt to take place as the result of bargaining based on might rather than on considerations of justice and equity. Under existing conditions the possibility of international agreement based on justice is much greater. For each Government knows in advance what other Governments are thinking, what attitude they are feeling towards. None of these attitudes are definitely formulated, all are in a state of flux, all remain plastic until the Conference enables them to set in the mould of a genuine international Convention or Recommendation.

The second advantage of this procedure of preparation

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resides in the preparing by the International Labour Office of a draft of a Convention for submission to the Conference. Before each Conference meets, the Office prepares, on the basis of the replies sent to its questionnaire by the various States Members of the Organisation, a draft to form the basis of the discussions of the Conference. In preparing this draft, the Office does not of course seek in any way to override the authority of the Conference. The Conference may make any alterations it likes in the draft prepared by the Office; it may even reject it altogether. The primary object of the drafts prepared by the Office is to give the various commissions appointed by the Conference something to work on, some point d'appui among the welter of possible conclusions.

So.

There is, however, a more fundamental reason, deeply rooted in the principles of political philosophy, for this procedure. If the Office prepared no draft for submission to the Conference, individual States would certainly do The result would be the probable emergence of one or two conflicting drafts, prepared by powerful States, each of which would secure adherents among the smaller and less powerful States, or among the workers' and employers' delegates. The Conference would be torn between two conflicting views, each supported à outrance by the prestige of a group of States, and no agreed conclusion would be possible. In the history of the Conference the most striking example of the evil results of such a situation was afforded by the discussion at the Genoa Conference of the 8-hour day at sea. It is true that the Office did prepare and submit to the Conference a draft for discussion. But the authority of the Office was not at that time great, and the Conference rapidly found itself enmeshed in a discussion of two different solutions of the problem, one British, the other French. The point of view of the British Government, which proposed a 56-hour week at sea and a 48-hour week in port, with strict limitation of overtime, was supported in general by the Northern countries, Japan, and Spain. On the other hand, the French Government, followed by most of the other countries, provided for a 48-hour week with unlimited overtime, compensated by additional wages or by off-time if in port. From the start it was

almost a foregone conclusion, in view of the sharp national cleavage thus manifested, that no agreement would be reached by the Conference.

Another instance of a somewhat different kind may be mentioned. At the Third Session of the International Labour Conference the British Government delegate asked a Committee to reject a draft prepared by the Office from replies to questionnaires, as a basis for discussion, and adopt another which he put forward. The Committee did so; but it was obliged to come back to a text similar to that prepared by the Office before final agreement could be reached.

An individual Government could, in isolated cases, perhaps, supply as good a draft as the International Labour Office; but such a draft would suffer from a double political defect. It would definitely engage the prestige of the Government which sponsored it, and would almost inevitably involve opposition, probably quite unnecessary and even gratuitous, on the part of other States. Under the present system, the draft prepared by the International Labour Office, with its international staff, comprising its estimate on the basis of all the data, of the probable line of agreement between the parties concerned, bears every guarantee as an objective and international document. It is thrown to the Conference as a new football is thrown to the teams in a cup-tie. The football may be kicked and kicked hard, but the International Labour Office has no susceptibilities, and at the end of the match the same football usually emerges, with a dent here and there perhaps, but essentially the same football as that with which the game commenced. This draft prepared by the Office engages no nation's prestige and, even more important, alienates no nation's sympathies. It can be, and is, discussed patiently and dispassionately on a basis rather of industrial than of national divergences of opinion.

The procedure of the Conference also follows genuinely international lines. This procedure was not laid down in Part XIII, but gradually developed in the light of experience. In essence it may be regarded as a combination of British parliamentary procedure and debate with the system of committees adopted by the

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