Among other questions studied are the reform of the calendar, commercial aerial law, wireless regulations, international motor drivers' licences, etc.
The League is also an instrument of positive co-operation in work of general benefit to the world. The short space here al lotted to this must not be taken as an adequate measure of its relative importance in the general achievements of the League.
In Poland an Epidemic Commission with western experience helped to prevent the spread of typhus through Poland to Europe For this purpose it was necessary to attack the prob lem in Russia itself, and the Commission went to Russia, estab lished effective co-operation and opened offices in Moscow and Kharkov. This was followed by a European conference at Warsaw in May 1922, attended by Soviet Russia, the Ukraine, Turkey, Germany and 24 other States. A draft convention was drawn up and has since become the basis of bilateral agree ments between the nations adjoining Poland and Russia. Public health courses were arranged for health officers at Moscow, Kharkov and Warsaw. The Epidemic Commission next gave assistance to the Greek health authorities in dealing with the dangers of epidemic resulting from the sudden immigration of masses of Greek refugees in and after the Graeco-Turkish war.
Apart from such emergency assistance, much has been done to secure an interchange of knowledge and experience between the public health organisations of the world, to promote their co operation and to study the characteristics of special epidemic or endemic diseases and the methods of combating them. Various
missions have visited the Eastern Mediterranean, the Far East, Greece and Albania, the Balkan States, Russia and Italy, Pales tine and Syria and Persia. Scientific work is also being done with a view to the standardisation of sera and of certain drugs for the treatment of diphtheria, tetanus and dysentery.
An interesting experiment, which has been made possible on a large scale by the generosity of the Rockefeller foundation, is the interchange of selected officers of health administrations. Officers of one country visit those of another, study their methods, participate for some weeks or months in practical work and then meet at Geneva to compare results. Lastly, the health organisa tion maintains an epidemiological intelligence service, publishing at regular intervals detailed information of the movement of epidemic disease throughout the world.
Drug Traffie.—Of what may be called the social questions handled by the League the control of noxious drugs, and par ticularly opium, has been the most difficult and important. The League took as its starting point the Opium Convention of 1912, which had been signed by most countries in the world. An advisory committee was appointed to prepare a plan to make the application of this convention, more effective in practice. They took as their aim the restriction of the traffic to medicinal and scientific requirements, and started an investigation to discover the extent of these requirements. The U.S. Government sent a delegation to participate in the work of this committee, and in any conference which might follow, and to attend the 1924 As sembly which reviewed the progress of the previous year and a half. Plenipotentiary conferences followed in the winter of 1924-5. The first of these dealt with the question of the gradual suppres sion of opium smoking in the Far East with a view to its ulti mate abolition. At this an agreement was reached under which the signatory States undertook (a) to strengthen the measures already provided for in the convention of 1912 and (b) to sup press entirely the consumption of prepared opium in their respec tive territories within 15 years from the date at which the poppy growing countries should succeed in preventing the clandestine exportation of raw opium from constituting a serious obstacle to the restriction of consumption in the former territories. The second conference drew up a convention for the more effective restriction of the production or manufacture of narcotics and of the international trade in them. The latter is to be controlled in particular by a system of export authorisations and import certif icates. A permanent central board is to be established which is to receive periodical estimates from the contracting parties of the quantities of narcotics they need and ask for explanations if they are such as to suggest a danger of illicit traffic. A further protocol engages the signatory States to take measures which shall com pletely prevent, within five years, the smuggling of opium out of their territories from constituting a serious obstacle to the sup pression of the use of prepared opium in other countries.