The League of Nations

International Technical Government

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIVE UNIONS.

The Congress of the Universal Postal Union, now being held in London has brought to the fore a development in international organization which 'ordinarily passes unnoticed, even unsuspected. How many pause to consider the complex problem in administration presented by the despatch of a post-card from London to Buenos Aires or a telegram from Stockholm to Tokio ? Yet ever since the revolution in the means of communication and transport and the advance of industrialization created problems no longer purely political and national, but largely technical and international, International Technical Government has been developing.

The first of the new organizations, the International Tele- graphic Union, was established in 1865. Already two years before a group of postal- experts from fifteen countries had met in Paris upon the initiative of Postmaster Blair of the United States, to adopt "principles which would facilitate the relations between peoples by postal communication," and so to lay the foundations of the Universal Postal Union of 18'74. Succeeding years have elicited a tardy and reluctant admission that the telegraph and the post are merely two of a growing number of branches of human activity which can only be successfully organized and regulated internationally. Thus, by 1914, international administration had been extended to Railway Goods Transport, the Protection of Literary and Industrial Property, the Publication of Customs' Tariffs, Public Health, the Compilation of Commercial Statistics, Uniformity of Weights and Measures and Radio Telegraphy. Research in certain branches of science and of agriculture was also co-ordinated internationally. In many cases the final solution resulted from disastrous attempts to grapple with the new problems nationally or regionally.

The War arrested only temporarily the multiplication of public international unions. Since 1919 international regula- tion has been extended to 'air navigation, hydrography, and refrigeration and the study of Epizootics, while the machinery for the control of the liquor traffic in Africa has been revised.

Many features of the structure of the public unions, tested and vindicated by experience, have been reproduced in the organs of the League. The system of committees and the acceptance of decisions by majority-vote which prevails in the Advisory Commissions of the League have long been the practice of the Universal Postal Union. Notable contributions have been made to the development of arbitration. Finally, the Bureaux of the Unions, as central agencies, have become unique storehouses of technical information, and are respon- sible for the achievement of a statistical uniformity which is essential to any barometer for the measurement of progress.

Side by side with the Public Unions, based on diplomatically concluded international conventions, nearly 400 private international asscclations are turning their -attention to almost every branch of hunapn activity. Though all unofficial in structure, and, in most cases, the creation of private initiative, some of these associations were sufficiently important, even before the War, to attract Government subsidies, official delegates or Government experts, and since the War, the tendency for official- participation has grown. In some cases a private association has blossomed out into a Public Union, while the position of others is analogous, the only difference being the substitution of an official statute for an official convention.

THEIR RELATION TO THE LEAGUE.

But the creation of the League, with the potentialities of its technical organizations, marks at once a most important advance and raises a vital issue. What is to be the future of international technical government ? Are the three main agencies, the Public Unions, the Private Associations, and the League's technical organizations to work in splendid independence often upon identical problems, or is international administration to be rid of duplications and protected against contradictions—in a word, is it to be " rationalized " under the guidance of Geneva ?

The answer to these questions will help to determine the position of the League -as the axis of the international world. The framers of the Covenant were fully alive to the necessity of concentrating, at least under the moral leadership of the Leave, all the hundred and one activities organized hitherto by other agencies. Article 24, in an elaborate attempt to achieve this end, makes four provisions of which the following are the most important : "I. There shall be placed under the direction of the League all international bureaux, already established (i.e., before January 10th, 1920) by general treaties, if the parties to such treaties consent."

"II. All such international bureaux and all commissions for the regulation of matters of international interest hereafter constituted shall be placed under the direction of the League."

A report prepared by M. Hanotaux, and approved by the Council in June, 1921, interpreted "the direction" of the League in the case of public bureaux as being mainly confined to the moral support which attaches to official affiliation to the League except in the cases where abuses are revealed.

The response to this invitation has been extremely dis- appointing. Only three Public Unions, the Central Office for the Control of the Liquor Traffic in Africa, the International Hydrographic Bureau, and the International Commission on Air Navigation, established in 1919, 1921 and 1922 respec- tively, have accepted. Not one of the public Unions founded before the War has shown any intention of taking advantage of the first provision, while in the case of the important International Institute of Refrigeration, founded in June, 1920, the second provision remains a dead letter. As someone has said : "Article 24 has built a luxurious hotel, but the guests have not yet arrived."

Meanwhile, the extraordinary development of the League's organizations for Health and Communications and Transit, has emphasized the case for co-ordination. Although the compromise between the International Public Health Office at Paris and the League's Health Organization has removed the more imminent dangers of overlapping and omission, and although valuable collaboration continues to take place between the Central Office for International Railway Trans- port in Berne, the International Railway Union in Paris and the League's organization for Communications and Transit in Geneva, yet the International Public Health Office remains an independent institution at Paris, and no less than five organizations are concerned with various aspects of international railway administration in Europe.

This situation, reproduced in other spheres of international government, not only invites the popular observer to lose himself in a maze of international organizations, but also promotes a dispersion of effort with inevitable reactions upon the effectiveness of international conventions and the general position of the League as the centre of the international world. THEIR PLACE IN THE WIDER FRAMEWORK.

It is clear that the measures taken to apply Article 24 hive been inadequate, a result which the discussions of the second Committee of the Assembly in 1927 and 1928 have done noth- ing to modify. The present moment provides an excellent opportunity for the re-examination of the whole question.- The only basis for an agreement between the League and the powerful public Unions must be a mutual compromise with the smiles at first weighted against the League. First„ steps should be taken to ensure the discussion of the question at meetings of the governing organs of the Unions. Secondly, the League should reconsider Article 24, with a view to offering more substantial advantages in the form of regular subsidies for the expansion and improvement of the work of the Bureaux. Thirdly, the States, signatories to the convention of any. one Union, should so instruct their expert delegates to its meetings that in the course of their technical deliberations they, should never lose sight of the relative position of their organization in the wider framework of an international society, inspired and directed by the conception of public service. Finally, if these preliminary advances succeeded, a conference might be called by the League of representatives from the Public Unions to conclude a definite agreement upon the basis of