§ SIR HOWARD VINCENT (Sheffield, Central)To ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the exchange and deposit of ratifications in respect of the International Convention with regard to the White Slave Traffic, signed at Paris on the 18th of May, 1904, have yet taken place; whether the international arrangement following upon that Convention has yet come into force; and whether the text of the Convention and arrangement, as well as the other Papers relating to the Paris Conference in 1902, will now be laid upon the Table of the House.
(Answered by Earl Percy.) The deposit of ratifications, which has been substituted for a formal exchange between each contracting State as provided for in the Convention is recorded in a Procès verbal drawn up at Paris on the 18th of January last. The Convention will, by its terms, come into force six months after the date of this Procès verbal, viz., on the 18th of July next. Three of the contracting States who have not yet deposited their ratifications can do so before that date. The question of publication will be considered in due course.