CO129-536-10 Need for leglisation concerning number of certificated officers carried on passenger ships 18-11-1931 - 15-6-1932 — Page 61

95

CONCLUSIONS

principle involved and left matters of its application entirely to the discretion of national laws or regulations would be an unsatisfactory solution of the problem for international purposes.

It was found, moreover, in the examination of the replies of the Governments here in question to the specific points of the Questionnaire on the matters referred to above that there was either almost general agreement among the replies or at any rate among the great majority of them as to the lines on which inter- national rules on the points concerned might be formulated in the Draft Convention. It was noted, in fact, in one or two cases that individual Governments would have preferred to go further in the way of inter- national regulation than the Questionnaire itself contemplated, e.g. as regards the actual minimum requirements of professional capacity.

The result of the analysis made in the preceding chapter of the Governments' replies to the Questionnaire is thus the proposed Draft Convention which is given at the end of this Report.

This draft consists of six articles, each of which corresponds to one of the six Questions in the Question- naire, though it has been found desirable for drafting purposes to arrange the articles in a somewhat different order from that in which the Questions were put to the Governments. The draft thus deals in its first two articles respectively with the question of its scope as regards vessels and the definition of the duties for which certificates are to be required, before laying down the principle of the possession of such certificates in its third article, and then, after prescribing in its fourth article the general minimum conditions to be complied with in the granting of the certificates, goes on in its last two articles to treat the question of the supervision of the enforcement of its rules before the question of sanctions for breaches of them.

The substance of the different articles has already been sufficiently considered in the preceding chapter. It is proposed, therefore, to confine the observations to be given here to a short, explanation of their contents, article by article, and to noting any special points in connection with them which arise out of the method of

100