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A.—7

2. Stocks are completely exhausted. We shall find these countries emptied of their substance. For a long time the essential needs of their populations will far exceed the available quantities of consumption goods. 3. The wear and tear on machines and materials, the exhaustion of reserves, the complete destruction of means of communication and transport, confiscations of all kinds, chaos in finance, currency and securities, all the destruction of buildings, factories, mines and electric power stations due to the campaigns of invasion and to the deliberate policy of an invader faced with indomitable resistance —to all these will be added still further devastation in the course of the campaign of liberation. Under such conditions, the immediate possibilities of the production of goods will be considerably reduced. 4. Until the emergence of order out of chaos and the restoration of equilibrium between needs and means, as regards both capital goods and consumption goods, the Governments of the liberated countries will doubtless find themselves compelled to maintain or to introduce economic controls similar to those that the United Nations have had to impose on themselves to meet war needs. 5. The dislocation of the entire machinery of production and distribution —including the loss of foreign markets —will of course render it for some considerable time still more difficult to ensure employment for all. Here there is a serious risk of extensive unemployment. And that is just the very time when the repatriated, the demobilized and the members of the resistance organizations will have to be reincorporated in economic life. An immense effort will thus have to be made to approach the ideal of employment for all. A series of special provisional measures will doubtless be required pending a gradual return, to less abnormal conditions. 111 The sooner these efforts of economic reconstruction are successful, the sooner will it be possible to achieve the social objectives defined by the Conference. The liberated countries are minded to undertake themselves, by their own efforts and_ under their own responsibility, the great work of national reconstruction, which will require gigantic efforts in the fields of labour and finance, but they are aware of the parallel need for a concerted effort in the international domain. In this general effort they will actively participate. They are justified in counting upon the full collaboration of countries less impoverished than they. They are convinced that the international solidarity forged between the United Nations during the war will continue during the peace, and that the countries that have known neither occupation nor devastation will wish to give them priority in the supply of the essential consumption and capital goods required for their economic and social restoration. ° The rapid restoration of the producing and consuming capacity of Europe is, moreover, indispensable to the return of the prosperity of the other countries of the world, and more especially to the prosperity of the great producers of raw materials, industrial products and agricultural produce. , - In the general interest, international solidarity must be established both m the economic domain and in the financial domain with a view to the complete and speedy reconstruction of the occupied and devastated countries. To the United Nations falls the task of finding and applying the necessary measures for an equitable distribution of the costs of reconstruction after the war. IV Another danger threatens the occupied countries at the present time. The enemy, on the eye of his retreat or rout, may resort to the last excesses in destroying without discrimination both life and wealth. In certain regions this threat has already materialized. The more extensive the destruction, the more difficult will be the reconstruction and the longer will the achievement of social conditions answering the hopes of this Conference be delayed. A last warning to the invaders informing them categorically that the authors of such excesses will answer for them with their persons and with their property might lessen the danger that threatens. In the circumstances, such warning should be given without delay and with the high moral authority of all. the nations gathered together at this Conference. V The peoples of Europe, at this moment bent under the yoke of the invader, will find in the solicitude of the Conference for their own special problems a measure of comfort and a guarantee that the effective organization of international solidarity will help them after the war to efface the marks of the tragedy that has weighed them down through these years of hardship. 11l Resolution concerning the Constitution and Constitutional Practice of the International Labour Oruanization and its Relationship with other International Bodies The General Conference resolves that— . 1 During periods of emergency when, in the judgment of the Governing Body, the efficient operation of the Organization or of "the Office will be advanced thereby, and the Governing Body so notifies the Members of the Organization, it shall provide that, supplementary to the normal procedure, the following communication should be transmitted through the Director: (a) The communication to Members of certified copies of Recommendations and Conventions in accordance with paragraph I of Article 19 of the Constitution of the Organization ; (b) The communication by Members of the information concerning the action taken in regard to Recommendations required by paragraph 6 of Article 19 of the Constitution ;

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