three categories. The Commission will report on the facts, recommend the steps which should be taken to meet the complaint, and indicate the economic measures, if any, which it considers would be appropriate in the event of the condition complained of not being remedied. Appeal may be made to the Permanent Court of International Justice of the League of Nations, which shall have power to review the findings of the Commission. If the defaulting State fails to carry out the recommendations of the Commission or the Permanent Court, as the case may be, within the specified time, it willthen be open to the other States to take the economic measures indicated against it.

It should be noted that under Article 419 of the Treaty each member is entirely free to decide whether it will take the measures of an economic character indicated in the Report of the Commission or in the decision of the Court, as appropriate to the case. Finally, each member of the Organisation is free to resign. The power of withdrawing from the League after two years' notice under paragraph 3 of Article 1 of the Covenant could in practice be made use of by Members of the International Labour Organisation who had any cause to retire from that body.

An effort was, indeed, made at the Peace Conference, in the discussions in the Commission on International Labour Legislation, to invest the decisions of the Conference with direct executive force. Thus the French and Italian Delegations desired that States should be under an obligation to ratify conventions so adopted, whether their legislative authorities approved them or not, subject to a right of appeal to the Council of the League of Nations. The Council might invite the Conference to reconsider its decision, and in the event of its being reaffirmed there would be no further right of appeal. Other Delegations, though not unsympathetic to the hope that in course of time the Labour Conference might, through the growth of the spirit of internationality, acquire the powers of a truly legislative international assembly, felt that the time for such a development was not yet ripe. If an attempt were made at this stage to deprive States of a large measure of their sovereignty in regard to labour legislation, the

result would be that a considerable number of States would either refuse to accept the convention altogether, or, if they accepted it, would subsequently denounce it, and might even prefer to resign their membership of the League of Nations rather than jeopardise their national economic position by being obliged to carry out the decisions of the International Labour Conference.

Clear expression was given to this point of view by Mr Vandervelde at the sitting of April 11, 1919, of the Preliminary Peace Conference at which the Report of the Commission on International Labour Legislation was considered.

'Politics,' Mr Vandervelde said, 'are the science of what is possible, and it is precisely because I expect great things from the International Labour Conference that I have been among those who did not wish to demand from the Peace Conference the national abdications to which the nations themselves would not have consented. We must deal tenderly with the sovereignties which are beginning to draw closer to each other, and one day will federate, and it is in order to spare them that I have accepted the present text.'

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In the end, it was decided in favour of making ratification of a Convention subject to the approval of the national legislatures or other competent authorities. This provision was inspired by the belief that although the time had not yet come when anything in the nature of an international legislature, whose decisions should be binding on the different states was possible, yet it was essential for the progress of international labour legislation to require the governments to give their national legislatures the opportunity of expressing their opinion on the measures favoured by a two-thirds majority of the Labour Conference.

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From the standpoint of practical results, it is abundantly evident that the decision of the Commission and of the Peace Conference was politically expedient. But it was more than politically expedient, it was philosophically correct. For the establishment of an International Super-Parliament would reduce the world to a dead uniformity-the undifferentiated universalism or cosmopolitanism to which reference has just been made, Even when political philosophy and practical expediency unite in demanding a high degree of concentration in

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the legislative and administrative life of a particular State, it has often been found desirable to grant freedom of action to the various constituent parts of the State in matters of labour legislation. As examples of this it is necessary only to mention the United States, Canada, and Australia. These are all comparatively recent manifestations of the development of the political spirit. It is not suggested that these systems represent the last word in political organisation. It is submitted, however, that they do present an interesting confirmation, in the field of practice, of the philosophical principle that undifferentiated unity is vicious. The preservation of national sovereignty and even of local initiative is necessary to secure the highest political development of which the world is capable, and this sovereignty and initiative are fully maintained in the International Labour Organisation.

Explicit recognition is given in Part XIII of the Treaty to the special position and special needs of these Federal States (Article 405). This provision was included in the Peace Treaty because of the thesis maintained by the American delegation. They pointed out that the Federal Government could not accept the obligation to ratify conventions dealing with matters within the competence of the forty-eight States of the Union with which the power of labour legislation for the most part rested. Further, the Federal Government could not guarantee that the constituent States, even if they passed the necessary legislation to give effect to a convention, would put it into effective operation, nor could they provide against the possibility of such legislation being declared unconstitutional by the supreme judicial authorities. The Government could not, therefore, engage to do something which was not within their power to perform, and the non-performance of which would render them liable to complaint. From From our standpoint, the importance of this provision of the Treaty resides in its explicit recognition of the necessity of the maintenance not only of national sovereignty and national differences, but even of the relative independence in labour matters enjoyed by constituent parts of its States Members. From this conviction also arises the distinction made in the Treaty between Draft Vol. 249.-No. 494.

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Conventions and Recommendations.* As a matter of historical fact, the distinction between Recommendation and Draft Convention, which finds no place in the original British draft submitted to the Commission, was made in order to provide a way of escape from the dilemma presented to the Commission by the American thesis to which allusion has just been made.

But from the philosophical standpoint, a deeper significance attaches to it. In the Text of Part XIII the distinction is somewhat vaguely phrased; but there is no doubt of the intentions of the Commission. These intentions are, indeed, made clear in the Report of the Commission.

'The Commission felt that there might in any event be instances in which the form of a recommendation affirming a principle would be more suitable than that of a draft convention, which must necessarily provide for the detailed application of principles in a form which would be generally applicable by every State concerned. Subjects will probably come before the Conference which, owing to their complexity and the wide differences in the circumstances of different countries, will be incapable of being reduced to any universal and uniform mode of application. In such cases a convention might prove impossible, but a recommendation of principles in more or less detail which left the individual States freedom to apply them in the manner best suited to their conditions would undoubtedly have considerable value.'

Again, we find a clear recognition of the importance of the differences between States, and the impossibility, in any system of International Labour Legislation, of securing absolute uniformity. In the Treaty itself,

explicit expression is given to this principle:

'In framing any recommendation or draft convention of general application the Conference shall have due regard to those countries in which climatic conditions, the imperfect development of industrial organisation, or other special circumstances, make the industrial conditions substantially

* Draft Conventions are draft international treaties which, if ratified and embodied in national legislation, will result in the same or equivalent progress being made in the ratifying States. Recommendations are general principles for the guidance of national Governments in drafting national legislation or in issuing administrative orders.

different and shall suggest the modifications, if any, which it considers may be required to meet the case of such countries.'

Is, then, the Organisation in any real sense international? The Organisation is international in the sense of zwischenstaatlich but not of überstaatlich. It is an entity or personality, but this entity or personality is not independent of the individual states which constitute it. It would not exist if all the constituent states ceased to exist. It lives and moves and has its being only through the states which are its members and which constitute it. The Organisation could certainly continue to exist, if some of its members ceased to exist as States or ceased to be members. It might be an interesting, but would hardly be a useful, task to speculate how many states are necessary to constitute the Organisation. If the membership were reduced to one single state, it could not be said that the International Labour Organisation continued to exist. It might indeed be maintained that the minimum number of States Members necessary to permit the carrying out of the terms of the Treaty is 12. The constitution of the Governing Body provides that 12 members must be representatives of governments. Now, it is not explicitly stated, but it is clearly intended, that these 12 representatives shall be representatives of 12 different States. If the number of members of the Organisation were to fall below 12, it would, therefore, appear that the provisions of the Treaty could not be carried out, and that the Organisation would cease to exist.

Though the question is theoretically disputable, it is not very profitable to pursue it. The soul of the Organisation is a spirit of unity and co-operation; and it is certain that if this spirit of unity were so weakened that secessions on a large scale were to take place, the soul of the Organisation would be destroyed. The Organisation is not merely the collocation or numerical addition of the States which constitute it. As the human body is not merely the arithmetical sum of all the limbs and organs, but is rather the organic unity of these various elements, so the International Labour Organisation is more than a mere list of States. It is an organic union of these States, organised for a common