The two passport conferences

The passport as we know it, a booklet of numbered pages with a photograph, was settled between two conferences of the League of Nations.

Bearer makes an investigator's papers for Call of Cthulhu and any 1920s or 1930s tabletop campaign: the passport a consul would have filled in, with the visas and frontier stamps a campaign leaves in it, and the permits, certificates and tickets of the period, to print or to share.

Paris, 15 to 21 October 1920

The Conference on Passports, Customs Formalities and Through Tickets met under the League's Provisional Committee for Communications and Transit. It was "convinced that the many difficulties affecting personal relations between the peoples of various countries constitute a serious obstacle to the resumption of normal intercourse", and held that total abolition of restrictions was not yet possible.

It asked for one uniform passport, the international type, by 1 July 1921; for visas of a year at ten gold francs at most and transit visas at one; for exit visas to go, except for a state's own nationals; and for luggage in transit to cross unopened. Its through-ticket article names the Simplon-Orient-Express.

Geneva, 12 to 18 May 1926

The Polish delegate opened by proposing that members of the League abolish passports altogether. The conference did not; it recommended easing frontiers "by means of bilateral agreements".

It noted that many countries issued passports for two years and asked for two at least, five if possible, valid for all countries. Visas were to run two years, for any number of journeys. It named the booklets of England, Germany, Austria and France as the type to follow.

Passport control was to happen on the moving train where possible, otherwise at one of the two frontier stations, both countries' police one right after the other. It asked the League to prepare an identity document for persons without nationality.

Sources

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