6 was considered by a Committee appointed by the Foreign Office and presided over by Lord Phillimore, including Sir Eyre Crowe, Sir William Tyrrell, Mr. C. J. B. Hurst, all of the Foreign Office, and Professors A. F. Pollard, J. Holland Rose, and Sir Julian Corbett, with Mr. Alfred Kennedy as Secretary. Their report was presented in 1918, and was communicated to the Government of the United States and subsequently used by General Smuts. Its nature is defined as including the general substance of those parts of the Covenant, which are directly concerned with International disputes'. Subsequent developments are indicated in Vol. III, Appendix II, passim. The evidence of Mr. Lansing and the communications of President Wilson, published by the Committee of Foreign Relations of the United States Senate, give much information about the American draft. CHAPTER I: SECTION II GENERAL AND INTERNATIONAL CLAUSES (continued) PART II INTERNATIONAL LABOUR AT THE CONFERENCE 1. Origin of the Commission for International Labour Legislation. When at the first plenary session of the Peace Conference Clemenceau announced that one of the three first commissions to be appointed was to deal with International Labour Legislation, the general opinion seemed to be that this action was to be explained as a counter move to the labour conventions of the Socialists and Trade Unionists, which were at that moment threatening to throw the whole weight of the international labour movement in opposition to the work of the Paris Peace Conference. This interpretation, whatever its justification, implied a certain unreality in the work of the Labour Commission; for an attempt to meet the large industrial problems, which it would have to face, in the spirit of temporizing expediency, might easily discredit anything it should attempt to do. The taint of a suspicion that this was the case lingered all through the Peace Conference, and a certain indifference towards its work was noticeable upon the part of those occupied with the more normal labours of treaty-making, in the preparation of maps for new boundaries, and statistics for indemnities. It is possible, however, that the Labour section of the Treaty, in spite of the relatively unfavourable circumstances under which it was prepared, may prove of as definite and lasting significance as the political and economic sections. There was indeed a grotesque side to the work of those exact scientists, the geographers, mapping the frontiers of a new Europe that was in the midst of an eruption, with the molten currents of revolution sweeping away all old-time barriers in both the political and the economic realm. Whatever could be done by the Labour section to stem this international revolutionary current by way of positive promises for the future, if not through achievement at the moment, was as effective a stabilizing action as the tracing of frontiers on the illusive, blood-stained map of Europe. 2. Relation to the Internationale'. But if it was a mistake to think too lightly of the work of the Commission for International Labour Legislation it would be wrong to expect too much of it. The relations of Labour to Capital, with which it was to concern itself in the main, are, in spite of a common belief to the contrary, primarily matters for home governments, and only to a slight extent international. This obvious fact has been obscured by the paradox that the Labour movement has so largely cast its programme in terms of international action. The Internationale' of pre-war days has been a Labour organization; but when one examines the setting of this revolutionary movement, it becomes clear that the international aspect has been worked up by parties in opposition to the various established Governments in a way that would have little relation to international labour legislation through and by those same Governments. The Internationale-as this revolutionary movement is generally termed-implies international direct action which would eliminate or subordinate altogether the very Governments through which the international labour legislation of the Peace Conference would be carried out. Every one of these Governments considers Labour problems essentially as home problems, and the last thing that Labour leaders would demand would be that they should be under the surveillance of a Foreign Office. How, therefore, could the Commission for International Labour Legislation accomplish anything worldwide, so long as it remained inside the existing governmental framework? 3. Programme of the Socialist Convention. A little glimpse of history will make the problem clear. Two International Labour Conventions were meeting in Switzerland while the Paris Conference was taking shape. The first of these was an International Socialist organization, which dated in the first instance from the days of Karl Marx and Bakunin, but which had been remade at a congress held in Paris in 1900, from which date it had maintained a standing secretariat and had even during the War attempted, with varying success, to continue its periodical congresses. This Socialist international movement, although it had played a prominent rôle in pre-war Socialist policies, did not have the practical effect upon either internal or foreign policies which its prestige seemed to warrant. The War played still more serious havoc with it; and the first meeting after the War revealed its essential weakness. For its programme was too far-reaching to be effective, mixing as it did political and economic aims. In attempting to cover the whole field of social justice, it was losing sight of even that class struggle upon which the Socialist movement to such a large degree depended and which at least gives it coherence and purpose. In short, the programme of the Socialist Convention was too diluted with things in general to offer any important clue toward Labour policies in the Peace. 4. The Labour Charter' of the International Federation of Trade Unions. Much more definite was the programme of the International Federation of Trade Unions which met side by side with the Socialists to participate in the same gesture of opposition to the Peace Conference. While its programme also included much that was not specifically Labour-for one of the most striking facts in the whole situation was the extent to which the Peace programmes of Labour parties extended over all sorts of questions from Balkan boundaries to tariffs and finance it drew up a definite Labour Charter, which elaborated the points raised at previous Trade Union Congresses, and elaborated them along lines set forth by the Imperial Labour Office in Berlin during December. This charter of Labour was before the Paris Commission for International Labour Legislation as a model or a challenge during the whole of its work, and bearing as it did the marks of its origin, was used by the German Government as the basis of the counter-proposal to the Labour section of the Treaty. This so-called Charter concentrates upon immediate and definite reforms, but makes slight provision for their continuance, or for international control of their administration. The machinery which it proposed to set up is simply the formal recognition of the work of the International Association for Labour Legislation, a private and at most semi-official institution with national self-governing branches in thirteen different countries and maintaining a secretariat at Basle in Switzerland. This International Association for Labour Legislation dates from 1900, and is an offshoot of the series of Government Congresses on Labour Legislation with which the Paris Peace Con ference was more logically connected than with either of the two Labour bodies-Socialist and Trade Union. 5. Previous International Government Congresses on Labour Legislation. The history of these official International Conferences for Labour Legislation is a slight one, and owes its chief impulse to the Swiss Federal Council which proposed a European Conference of this character as far back as 1876. Bismarck opposed the idea, but the young Emperor William II not only accepted it but made it his own, and the first International Conference on Labour Protection met in Berlin in 1890. It accomplished nothing however, for the Governments of that day were unwilling to go further than the discussion of general humanitarian principles even in the question of the labour of women and children. Further conferences have been held at Brussels and in Switzerland (especially in 1905 and 1906), but the total result of a generation of International Labour Legislation by way of these Government Congresses is exceedingly slight. Two general treaties only have resulted; one suppressing the use of phosphorus in match-making, and the other limiting night work for women in industry. When one compares these insignificant results with the vast and intricate amount of Labour legislation in force in the different countries, one sees how delusive would be the hope of securing from the Conference at Paris any large measure of social reform for universal adoption. Had the Commission for Labour Legislation limited itself to specific points to be incorporated in the Treaty of Peace, it could have accomplished very little. A Charter of Labour can be drawn up with relative ease so long as it is merely an expression of ideals to be aimed at by a party not responsible for carrying them out. For instance, the ideals of an Eight Hour Day could be expressed in a single sentence in the Labour Charter; actual enactment of that ideal into law under the varying conditions of both industry and social development in the different countries, becomes a delicate and difficult task. Even the abolition of Child Labour carries with it complications in the readjustment of family budgets and the elaboration of educational facilities, which in their turn react upon the whole economic and social structure. No one Treaty of Peace could elaborate all these conditions into workable formulae. Moreover, to apply them successfully would mean adapting them not only to the different conditions of the different nations, but |