The idea of an international code of Labour Protection could not have been more flatly rejected. Hence the opposition to the idea manifested by Prince Bismark was fully borne out by the Conference. This opposition has everything in its favour, for it is clear that a uniform international code of Labour Protection would supply boundless opportunities for friction and for stirring up international commercial quarrels. If it were desired to establish Labour Protection guaranteed by international agreement, it would be found that there would be as many disturbances of international peace as there are different kinds of industry, nay, I will even say, as there are workmen. The countries whose administration was best and most complete would be the very ones that would be most handicapped: seeing that they could expect only a very minimum of real reciprocity from those other contracting powers whose administration was faulty, and where a strong national sentiment was lacking in the workers, owing to their miserable and penurious condition in the absence of effective protection for labour. Accurately to supervise the observance of such an international agreement we should require an amount of organisation which it is quite beyond our power to supply. But even on paper, international labour legislation has no significance beyond that of creating international discontent and agitation, and of supplying political animosity with inexhaustible materials for arousing international jealousy. The Berlin Conference has negatively produced a favourable effect by the protest of England and France, if one reflects how fiercely the scepticism of Bismark's policy was attacked before the meeting of the Conference. Repeated readings of the reports of the Conference have confirmed me in the impression that Prince Bismark was fully upheld by the Conference in his opposition to the establishment of Labour Protection by international agreement. But I have felt it necessary to clearly establish the grounds on which the opposition to this form of protection is based. The moral influence of the international Conference, however, has been on the other hand something more than "vain beating the air." This is already shown in the increased impetus given to the improvement of national labour-protective legislation.