As time elapsed, it became very apparent that the activities of the Commission had to cover an extremely wide field of action – perhaps too wide even to be fully explored – for this reason, over the years, certain topics initially retained have been dropped, not because interest in them has diminished, but simply because it became clear to all concerned that unless the number of studies were restricted, there would be little chance of them resulting in concrete proposals likely to be unanimously accepted by the members of the Commission and passed on as recommendations with an international application.
Such it would appear are the essential traits which characterize this relatively new commission, so original and so different from the other commissions which our esteemed Association has set up.
The explanation of this individuality springs, as has already been explained, from the very nature of the subject it deals with which, from the start, has engulfed an entirely new field of activity: under such circumstances, it is not surprizing that some of us were lead, at one stage, to ask if, faced with so many individual problems, so closely linked to new demands which have evolved with the needs of our times. it would not be better to create a third navigational section and place alongside Ocean Navigation and Inland Navigation, the newly evolved Pleasure Navigation.
Your Association deemed otherwise. deciding that this third section could not be justified : it therefore resolved that studies made by the Commission should be subject to the norms fixed for the work of the other commissions and that it should strive to conclude its studies with concrete proposals.
These are the circumstances under which the 2nd Commission”s activities have operated and we are now going to examine the results it has obtained.
