Raw Materials The League of Nations Committee on Raw Materials,
which begins its work next week, has been given a good start by the admirable study of the problem prepared for it by the Secretariat of the League. The Secretariat has, perhaps wisely, not attempted a definition of raw materials, and the committee also would be well advised not to strive after too great precision. The Secretariat memorandum, which is necessarily objective and non-committal, suggests, among possible contributions to a solution of the problem, the abolition of obstacles to commercial exchanges, the application in colonial territories of the system of the Open Door and commercial equality, the transformation of colonies into internationalised territories, international control of the distribution of raw materials, increased consumers' representation in the direction of cartels, such as the tin cartel, controlling production and distribution. Such suggestions, excellent as they are, will meet innumerable practical difficulties ; the duty of the committee is to see how far they can be removed. The gravest difficulties, however, are political, and they become no easier because of the pointed absence from the committee of the two nations, Italy and Germany, which claim to suffer most from lack of raw materials but decline to join in discuss- ing how their grievance can be remedied. But remedies can be devised and adopted without the collaboration of those two countries, welcome as the collaboration which they have declined would have been.
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