commercial usages, and also cartographic scales, conventional eco- 
nomic signs, colours, quantities, and units of value, diagrams etc. 
This will require reference to past experience and logal consider- 
ations, and it will thus be necessary; 
c) to make a study of the principles underlying the question, 
from the point of view of history and social legislation comprising 
the various periods of development of the mining industry, systems 
of laws relating to land and mining, methods of exploitation, car- 
tels and trusts and systems of socialisation and nationalisation. 
The Committee would have, in the second place, to concern 
itself with practical aims and duties, namely, 
a) the actual international adoption and simplification of scienti- 
fically defined principles, with the assistance of the great organising 
machinery of the League of Nations. 
b) as a regular practical duty: to follow movements of the mar- 
kets and to cope with crises. 
c) as an occasional duty: to prevent disputes, to give expert 
opinions, arbitral awards etc, 
In the third place, in order to carry out the two duties mentioned 
above the Committee would naturally have to concern itself with 
the collection of the necessary material and the publication of results. 
This grouping of facts on the basis of a scientific method with un- 
biassed objective deductions tending towards practical objects, in 
short, this rational synihesie of a number of analytical details re- 
presents a task which can only be accomplished by a world organi- 
sation such as is to be found in the idea of the League of Nations 
and of international intellectual co-operation. 
An international mining institute such as this, however, acting 
in the interest of economic peace, can by means of its scientific 
and practical activities and with the aid of serious publications and 
suitable propaganda, prove a most powerful factor in the cause of 
peace, 
signed) M. Krahmann, 
-38