NTERNATIONAL CONVENTIONS

Sir,--You have already allowed me to point out how singularly
ill-adapted is the resuscitated "Naval Prize Consolidation Bill"[1] to
inform Parliament upon the highly technical points as to which a vote in
favour of the Bill might be supposed to imply approval of the Government
policy.

Two other Bills have now been presented to the House of Commons in such
a shape as to raise a doubt whether the wish of the Government, or of
the draftsman, has been that the topics to which they relate shall be
discussed _en pleine connaissance de cause_.

The "Geneva Convention Bill"[2] is intended to facilitate the withdrawal
of reservations subject to which the Convention was ratified by Great
Britain. These reservations, upon which I insisted at Geneva, somewhat
to the surprise of my French and Russian colleagues, relate to Arts. 23,
27, and 28 of the Convention, one of the effects of which would have
been to impose upon our Government an obligation to carry through,
within five years, an Act of Parliament, making the employment of the
Geneva emblem or name, except for military purposes, a criminal offence.
Any one who knows something of the difficulties which beset legislation
in this country, especially where commercial interests are involved,
will see that the performance of such an undertaking might well have
proved to be impossible. Though myself strongly in favour of placing, at
the proper time and in an appropriate manner, legislative restrictions
upon the general use of the emblem and name, I can hardly think the Bill
now before Parliament to be well adapted for its purpose. The
"Memorandum" prefixed to it ought surely to have stated, in plain
language, the effect of the articles in question and the reasons which
prevented them from being ratified together with the rest of the
Convention. Instead of this, only one of those articles is cited, and
few members of Parliament will be aware that an omitted paragraph of
that article requires that the use of the emblem or name should be
penalised by British law at the latest five years and six months from
the date of the British ratification, which was deposited on April 16,
1907--_i.e._, not later than October 16, 1912. This requirement is not
satisfied by the Bill, which, even if passed in the present Session,
would preserve intact till 1915 the rights of proprietors of
trade-marks, while somewhat harshly rendering forthwith illegal the user
of the emb