ment through the diplomatic channels, and the latter Government shall, in turn, inform its nationals. If this notification fails to produce the desired result, the contracting parties shall by agreement adopt other effective measures (Art. 10).

'All complaints formulated by foreign workers concerning the labour or living conditions imposed by their employers or concerning difficulties of any kind which they might experience owing to the fact of their living in a foreign country were to be addressed or transmitted to this department either directly or indirectly through the medium of the proper consular authorities. These complaints might be submitted in the native language of the workers concerned.' An additional protocol stipulated that, 'within three months following the exchange of ratifications of the convention, a special convention should determine the conditions subject to which French workers in Poland and Polish workers in France should be entitled to benefit by relief, insurance, and social welfare legislation and should be able to exercise trade union rights and the right of association in conformity with the national legislation of each of the contracting parties. This special convention was signed at Warsaw on the 14th October, 1920.' The main convention of the 7th September, 1919, contained a most favoured nation treatment clause, in virtue of which the Polish immigrants into France secured the greater benefits accorded to Italian workers in France under the Franco-Italian Convention of the 30th September, 1919.

6

As regards the Franco-Italian Convention, it will perhaps be sufficient to draw attention to one or two conspicuous features. This instrument went beyond the Franco-Polish Convention in making provision for the social welfare, relief, and protection of workers of either nationality in the territory of the other on a basis of absolute equality in respect of statutory regulations. In this field a groundwork already existed in the Franco-Italian Convention of 1906 relative to industrial accidents. In regard to the acquisition, possession, and transmission of small rural or urban properties, immigrants were to have the same rights and privileges as nationals, excluding, however, privileges granted as a result of war and with reservations regarding provisions of Acts concerning the residence and settlement of foreigners. The two Governments, taking note of the fact that equality of treatment was already sufficiently realized in the question of public elementary education and private schools, reserved the right to negotiate a special convention on primary and vocational education for immigrants and their families.'

Disputes regarding the application of the convention were to be settled by arbitration (Art. 26), whereas the Franco-Polish Convention (Art. 16) had left them to be settled by diplomatic negotiation. In view of the controversy over the status of Italian nationals in Tunis,1 it is significant that the convention did not apply to colonies and protectorates, though the two Governments undertook to enter into negotiations for the purpose of concluding special conventions applicable in this field.

The Franco-Czechoslovak Convention of the 20th March, 1920, was modelled on the Franco-Polish Convention, and it is only necessary to notice one or two important differences.2 The most favoured nation treatment clause and the provision for forwarding complaints through consular officers were omitted. On the other hand, the government departments concerned in either country were, if necessary, to appoint inspectors speaking the immigrant workers' language, and in France a Czechoslovak interpreter for every hundred Czechoslovak workers was to be provided at the employer's expense (Art. 6). Health insurance, which was compulsory in Czechoslovakia but not in France at this time, was also provided for (Art. 7). As under the Franco-Polish Convention, the recruiting of labour in either country for service in the other was reserved exclusively to the government departments, and any contracts obtained direct by employers or their agents, and not through the official channels, were to be null and void.

It has been mentioned that in Luxembourg and Belgium the increase in the rate of Italian immigration after the War, as compared with the five years 1910 to 1914, was even greater than ip France; and, in view of this, the Governments of Luxembourg and Italy signed, on the 11th November, 1920, a treaty 3 on the lines of the Franco-Italian Convention of the 30th September, 1919. Like the Franco-Italian Convention, the treaty between Italy and Luxembourg contained no clause authorizing one of the two parties to recruit workers in the territory of the other by means of official missions.' On the other hand, it resembled the Franco-Polish Convention in including a most favoured nation treatment clause, and the Franco-Czechoslovak Convention in regard to the forwarding of complaints. 'Immigrant workers were authorized to submit in

1 See the Survey for 1925.

2 For a fuller précis of the differences, see Emigration and Immigration, PP: 346-7. 3 Précis in op. cit., pp. 347-9.

their native language complaints or demands which they might have to formulate in regard to labour conditions and living conditions or difficulties of any kind which they might experience in the country of immigration. It was also provided that Italian workers working in Luxembourg might appoint from among their comrades a representative to explain their demands in regard to labour conditions either to employers or to the authorities to whom the supervision of labour was entrusted; and both employers and authorities were to afford the said representative every facility for the accomplishment of the task entrusted to him. In the Franco-Italian Treaty this right to appoint a representative was limited to workers employed in mining operations. The treaty dealt particularly with the question of education. It recognized that immigrants should have the same right as nationals to be admitted to public elementary and technical schools, and the benefit of arrangements or financial assistance for the purposes of education, and that they should be able to establish additional schools or classes intended specially for the teaching of their mother tongue.'

2

Admirable as these international agreements were, it was not to be expected that they could altogether eliminate the friction which would naturally be produced by an inherently difficult situation. The foreign workers appear to have been unpopular in France, while on their side they were not altogether satisfied with the treatment which they received. Accordingly, fresh negotiations were opened between the French and Polish Governments on the 25th March, 1924, with a view to modifying the existing conventions in the light of the experience that had been gained of their practical working. The French Government undertook to cancel an administrative regulation 3 under which the French public authorities had been empowered to arrest any Polish agricultural labourer convicted of breach of contract and to require him either to return to his employer or to quit French territory-a regulation to which the Poles objected as leaving them without protection against bad employers and as reducing their status to virtual slavery. The negotiators also discussed the organization of Polish schools in

1 For the sake of completeness, mention may be made of the AustroPolish Agreement, signed at Cracow on the 24th June, 1921, for the recruiting of Polish workers to be employed in Austrian agriculture, and of the GermanCzechoslovak Agreement of February 1922, in which account had to be taken of the depreciation of the German currency. (For précis, see op. cit., pp. 347 and 349-51 respectively.)

2 See Le Temps, 30th April; L'Europe Nouvelle, 14th June, 1924. 3 Circular No. 53 (23rd June, 1922) of the Ministry of the Interior.

France, and the French Government appears to have conceded that the children of Polish immigrants should receive instruction in their national language as well as in French. The French employers' organizations were to arrange and maintain Polish classes in places where there were more than 65 Polish children, and the teaching staff were to be supplied by the competent Polish authorities.

By this time the immigration problem was being actively discussed in France, and the discussion was revealing acute differences of opinion. One party regarded the immigrants as a national danger, and in the summer of 1924 there was a Bill before the French Chamber of Deputies for imposing upon foreign residents in France direct taxation equal to that paid by Frenchmen and also imposing a special tax upon French employers who employed foreign labour when French labour was available.1 A few months later the Ministry of the Interior was reported to be considering measures for subjecting immigration to stricter control and supervision. Another party regarded the foreign workers in France as a potential national asset, and urged that they should be encouraged to settle permanently in France when their contracts expired.

Could such people be assimilated? America showed they could, but there was no need to go to America. For instance, of the population of Marseilles only 40 families were of pure French descent, the rest were Italian, Greek, Spanish, all nationalities; yet Marseilles was one of the largest, most prosperous, and most patriotic communities of France.3

Against this optimistic forecast were to be set certain statistics, prepared by the Prefect of the Seine Department, which apparently showed that only a very small proportion of the sons of foreigners settled in France exercised their option of adopting French nationality upon reaching the age of 21. No doubt they were deterred by the prospect of compulsory military service in the French army, and yet the desire to maintain, if not to increase, the military strength of France was the foundation of French concern in the growth of the population '.4 The France of 1924, exhausted by a devastating war and burdened by a peace settlement which had left her with increased military commitments, was confronted with the problem that had troubled Rome in the age when Augustus, with an Italian 1 See The Times, 30th June, 1924.

2 Ibid., 9th October, 1924.

3 Quoted in The Manchester Guardian, 23rd February, 1924, from an address delivered by M. de Monzie, Senator for the Department of the Lot, to the Society for Foreigners in France at its first meeting.

4 The Times, 30th June, 1924.

country-side depopulated by the Civil Wars, had been forced to provide for the defence of the Rhine Frontier. Augustus, struggling with a falling birth-rate in the citizen-body and finding himself unable to arrest the fall by social and fiscal legislation, had sought an alternative source of man-power in the wholesale enfranchisement of alien populations; and this policy, which he bequeathed to his successors, postponed the military and political downfall of the Roman Empire for several hundred years. Despairing of his nation's fertility, the Roman statesman had put his faith in her genius for assimilation, and that faith was justified by the event. Would French statesmanship venture upon the same daring course? In 1924 this was perhaps the most important political question which Frenchmen had to consider; for on the answer which they gave to it would perhaps depend the solution of the Security Problem, which at this time eclipsed all other problems in the French national consciousness.

(v) The International Conference on Emigration and Immigration held in Rome, on the 15th-30th May, 1924, on the invitation of the Italian Government.

It will have become apparent that no European country had so great a material stake as Italy in the emigration problem, and it is therefore not surprising that, towards the close of the year 1923, the Italian Government should have taken the initiative in organizing an international conference on the subject. In character this conference was to resemble the Naval Conference which was organized by the Italian Government in the course of the same year.1 It was to be technical, not diplomatic, and its work was to result not in the signature of conventions but in the establishment of general principles which might serve as bases for general international conventions, or for conventions between individual states, which Governments might eventually conclude, or for direct agreements between the administrative services in the various countries.2 The agenda suggested by the Italian Government were as follows:

(a) Transport of emigrants.

(b) Hygiene and sanitary services.

1 See I A (viii), pp. 77-80, above.

2 See the circular from the International Labour Office to certain States Members of the International Labour Organization, quoted in the Official Bulletin, vol. viii, No. 20, p. 194.