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Europe are authorised to maintain this maximum at 50 centimes, inclusive of the delivery of a registry receipt to the sender.

V

By way of exception to the provisions of paragraph 3 of Article 12 of the Convention, Persia has the right of collecting from the addressees of printed papers of all kinds received from foreign countries a tax of 5 centimes per article distributed. This right is accorded to it provisionally.

The same right is accorded to China in the event of its adhering to the principal Convention.

VI

By way of exception to the provisions of Article 4 of the Convention and to the corresponding paragraphs of the Regulations relative thereto, it is agreed as follows in regard to the transit rates to be paid to the Russian Administration on account of correspondence exchanged by way of the Siberian Railway:

1^o The accounting for transit charges in respect of the articles mentioned above shall be based, from the date of the opening of the aforesaid railway, on special returns taken every three years during the first 28 days of the month of May or of the month of November (alternately) of the second year of each triennial period, such returns to take effect retrospectively from the first year.

2^o The statistics of May 1908 shall regulate the payments to be made from the date of the commencement of the traffic in question until the end of the year 1909. The statistics of November 1911 shall apply to the years 1910, 1911, and 1912, and so on.

3^o If a country of the Union commences the despatch of its articles by way of the Siberian Railway during the period covered by the above-mentioned statistics, Russia has the right to demand the taking of separate statistics relating exclusively to such articles.

4^o The payment of transit charges due to Russia for the first and, if necessary, for the second year of each triennial period, is to be made provisionally at the end of the year on the basis of the preceding statistics, subject to a subsequent settlement of accounts in accordance with the results of the new statistics.

5^o Transit in open-mail is not admitted by the aforesaid railway.

Japan has the right to apply the stipulations of each paragraph of the present article in regard to the settlement of transit rates due to Japan for the land or sea transit of articles exchanged by way of the Japanese railway in China (Manchuria) and so far as concerns the inadmissibility of transit in open-mail.