The Story of International Relations, Part One
Cold-Blooded Idealists
Jo-Anne Pemberton
School of Social Sciences
University of New South Wales
Sydney, NSW, Australia
Palgrave Studies in International Relations
ISBN 978-3-030-14330-5 ISBN 978-3-030-14331-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14331-2
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
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Acknowledgements
I am considerably indebted to a number of people who have supported me in preparing this manuscript. I thank members of my family: Mark, Sally, Gail and Gregory Pemberton. I also thank Helen Pringle for her support. Many thanks to Peter Carman and Jean-Michel Ageron-Blanc, president and chef d’enterprise respectively, of the Paris American Academy, for their generous assistance during my stays in Paris. I am especially grateful to the following archivists: Jens Bol, Mahmoud Ghander and Steve Nyong. Their help and expertise made it possible for me to access archival records and other materials of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s held in the UNESCO Archives in Paris.
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vii contents 1 The League of Nations and the Study of International Relations 1 2 The League of Nations and Origins of the International Studies Conference 71 3 The Paris Peace Conference, Racial Equality and the Shandong Question 157 4 The Quest for a Machinery of Cooperation in the Pacific: The Covenant Rejected, the Washington Conference and the 1924 Exclusion Laws 241 5 The Institute of Pacific Relations 1927–1929 and the Evolution of the International Studies Conference 1928–1930 315
6 International Studies in 1931: From Copenhagen to Shanghai
The Lessons of Manchuria
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397 7
467 Index 579
AbbreviAtions
BCCIS British Coordinating Committee for International Studies
BIIA British Institute of International Affairs
CFR Council on Foreign Relations
CISSIR Conference of Institutions for the Scientific Study of International Relations
CLON Commission of the League of Nations
DNVP Deutschnationale Volkspartei
FPA Foreign Policy Association
GIIR Geneva Institute of International Relations
GRC Geneva Research Center
IAP Institut für Auswärtige Politik
ICIC International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation
IICI Institut International de Coopération Intellectuelle
IIIC International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation
ILO International Labour Organization
IPR Institute of Pacific Relations
ISC International Studies Conference
ISIPR International Secretariat of the Institute of Pacific Relations
JCIPR Japanese Council of the IPR
LNU League of Nations Union
LON League of Nations
LSE London School of Economics and Political Science
NSDAP National Socialist German Workers’ Party
OIC Organisation of Intellectual Cooperation
OJ Official Journal (of the League of Nations)
PID Political Intelligence Department
RIIA Royal Institute of International Affairs
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SDN Société des Nations
UA UNESCO Archives
UIA Union of International Associations
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ABBREVIATIONS
list of figures
Fig. 1.1 International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation at the side of the Palais Royal in Paris 2
Fig. 2.1 The signing of the Kellogg Pact by the German Gustav Stresemann. 1928. Place: Paris 71
Fig. 2.2 Kellogg-Briand Pact, with signatures of Gustav Stresemann, Paul Kellogg, Paul Hymans, Aristide Briand, Lord Cushendun, William Lyon Mackenzie King, John McLachlan, Sir Christopher James Parr, Jacobus Stephanus Smit, William Thomas Cosgrave, Count Gaetano Manzoni, Count Uchida, A. Zaleski, Eduard Benes 72
Fig. 3.1 Council of Four at the WWI Paris Peace Conference, May 27, 1919 (candid photo) (L–R): Prime Minister David Lloyd George (Great Britain), Premier Vittorio Orlando (Italy), French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and US President Woodrow Wilson 158
Fig. 3.2 Japanese peace delegates in 1919 with Makino Nobuaki 159
Fig. 4.1 The Conference on Limitations of Armaments, Washington 242
Fig. 4.2 The Punahou School in Honolulu where the first conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations took place in 1925 243
Fig. 5.1 Old engraving of the building of the School of Politics (Schinkelsche Bauakademie) 316
Fig. 5.2 International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (League of Nations). Plenary Session in the Palais Wilson, between 1924 and 1927 317
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Fig. 6.1 The Chinese delegation addresses the Council of the League of Nations following the Mukden Incident
397
Fig. 6.2 Portrait of the attendees of the Fourth Biennial Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations 398
Fig. 7.1 Lytton Commission in Shanghai, 1932 468
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LIST OF FIGURES
The League of Nations and the Study of International
Relations
InternatIonal StudIeS In the Interwar YearS
This study traces the development of the academic subject of international relations, or what was often referred to in the interwar years as international studies, within the framework of the Organisation of Intellectual Cooperation (OIC) of the League of Nations (LON). In this regard, its focus rests on an institution which came to be known as the International Studies Conference (ISC) and which commenced life at a meeting in Berlin in 1928. The determination to avert another European war and the zeal for international organisation engendered by the creation of the LON were key factors behind the formation of the ISC. Its founders hoped that through furthering the institutional development of the study of international relations, they would help foster mutual comprehension among peoples and help entrench the LON system. Indeed, the aforementioned Berlin meeting was itself intended to serve as an instrument of international rapprochement and as a means of reinforcing the LON. The choice of Berlin as the location for the meeting, which was initiated and organised by the OIC’s Paris-based executive arm, namely, the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC), must be viewed in light of Germany’s entry into the LON in September 1926 and, more particularly, the desire to further harmonise Franco-German relations. The organisers of the Berlin meeting were acutely aware that in the absence of
© The Author(s) 2020
J.-A. Pemberton, The Story of International Relations, Part One, Palgrave Studies in International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14331-2_1
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Fig. 1.1 International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation at the side of the Palais Royal in Paris. Source: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication/ Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine
Franco-German rapprochement there could be no assurance of peace and security in Europe.
This study does not claim that the year 1919 marks the birth of international relations as an academic discipline. Courses in the field of international law and diplomatic history had long been offered in academic institutions in Europe and North America. Furthermore, generalist courses on international affairs under such rubrics as Contemporary Politics had been introduced into the curricula of American universities as early as 1900. Yet what needs to be underlined is the fact that almost all of those
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involved in promoting the study of international relations in the interwar years believed that they were engaged in a new intellectual enterprise. This partly explains why this study traces the development of international studies in the period after the end of the Great War or what later became known as the First World War.
The other main factor explaining my temporal starting point is the birth of the LON. For the purposes of this study, this organisation is significant in two mutually informing respects. First, the LON was deeply involved in the development of the study of international relations, above all, through its intellectual organs. Second, a prime motivation behind the promotion of such study was the desire to see a hardening of the norms enshrined in the LON Covenant. In this way, the development of the discipline of international relations can be seen as a component of a larger enterprise: it was a feature of the new world order which was proclaimed and which began to be instituted at the end of the First World War. Indeed, the cultivation of the study of international relations was viewed exactly in this light by many of its partisans.
It should be emphasised that the ISC was not the first attempt at organising the study of international relations on an international basis. That honour must go to the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), a body that resulted from a meeting of representatives of nations bordering the Pacific in mid-1925 in Honolulu and whose membership soon came to include non-Pacific powers with imperial interests in the region. It is important to note that in the official literature produced by the IPR’s international secretariat (ISIPR) in the IPR’s early years, the IPR was far from being represented as a strictly regional organisation. To the contrary, the IPR’s secretariat stressed the point that the Pacific was a crucial arena of world politics and that the IPR was a body engaged in international relations research. In this connection, it is also noteworthy that from 1927 down to 1945, observers from the LON and the International Labour Organization (ILO) attended IPR conferences. This study discusses the IPR at length. A key reason for this concerns the fact that as an international organisation engaged in collaborative research on international problems, the IPR was the principal model for the ISC. Further to this, the IPR served as a yardstick against which the ISC would be measured on various occasions throughout its life. That these two bodies had overlapping memberships and that the IPR was a constant fixture at ISC conferences from 1929 to 1949 are of relevance in this context.
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To the extent that the IPR might be viewed as a largely regional organisation, it cannot be seen as different in kind from the ISC: the members of the latter body were predominantly European, and their eyes were trained mainly on European affairs. In fact, American and Canadian members occasionally criticised the ISC because of its bias towards Europe. To its credit, the ISC sought to rectify this situation. For example, repeated approaches were made by the ISC’s secretariat to Chinese and Japanese institutions in the hope that they would join the conference. These approaches met with a degree of success.
Another reason for dwelling on the IPR is that its activities show that concentrated scholarly thinking about international relations both in abstract and in concrete terms was not confined to countries such as France, Great Britain and the United States in the years after 1918. It is true that the institutional development of the study of international relations was most advanced in these three countries at the time, above all, in the United States. Yet insights into the nature and conduct of international relations developed in the interwar period by individuals and groups located outside these centres of power and influence should not be overlooked. Such insights certainly were not overlooked at the time, as evidenced by the very positive international reputation enjoyed by the IPR and the ISC’s ongoing attempts to establish a membership that represented the greater part of the globe.
Both the IPR and the ISC served as forums in which the major political controversies of the interwar period were rehearsed. In the case of the IPR, this point largely relates to its conference discussions concerning Chinese efforts to re-establish China’s autonomy and unfolding events in Manchuria. In the case of the ISC, this point largely relates to debates taking place in the years between 1934 and 1937 on the topics of collective security and peaceful change. These debates well demonstrate that the defence of the League system by interwar students of international affairs in the face of the challenges confronting it was generally based on hardheaded political calculations. Indeed, partisans of the LON often discussed the conditions giving rise to the political crises of the interwar years in terms ‘as frank as those of any blood-and-iron historian,’ to borrow Frank M. Russell’s description of the analysis of the disarmament question issued by Salvador de Madariaga who headed the Disarmament Section of the LON Secretariat between 1922 and 1928.1
1 Frank M. Russell, Theories of International Relations (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1936), 441–2. Madariaga joined the secretariat in 1921.
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The ISC’s discussions of the topics of collective security and peaceful change are of historical interest because they overlap with the debate concerning appeasement and provide us with further insights into the conceptual environment in which that increasingly polarised debate occurred. What we also obtain from examining these discussions are instructive illustrations of the rhetorical manoeuvres performed on behalf of the Hitler regime with a view to manipulating foreign opinion in its favour. A good example of the above was on display at the 1937 conference of the ISC where a senior Nazi propagandist gave vent to the German grievance about the fact that Germany had been stripped of its colonial possessions under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In the forum of the 1937 conference of the ISC, the same propagandist mounted a detailed argument to the effect that the retrocession of the German colonies was a matter of law and justice, an argument accompanied by a vague hint that should Germany’s former colonies not be returned to Germany, there might be trouble ahead. Of further historical interest in regard to the 1937 conference was the discussion within its framework of what was referred to as the colonial problem, a discussion which served to further prise open the colonial question in a way favourable to a policy of decolonisation.
the orIgInS of Intellectual cooperatIon
My account of the development of the study of international affairs in the years between the First and Second World Wars and in the early post-war period is mostly chronological. Before embarking on this account, I want to elaborate on the origins, institutionalisation and guiding philosophy of the OIC because it was this organisation that provided the institutional and, importantly, the cultural setting in which much of what is discussed in this study takes place.
The OIC can be seen as the culminating point of the profusion of activity taking place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in regard to international intellectual cooperation. An inspirational figure in this regard was Léon Bourgeois, an adherent of France’s Radical Party (Parti radical) who emerged as a leading statesman. The degree of influence exercised by Bourgeois over many years caused Julien Luchaire, the first director of the IIIC, to describe him as that ‘remarquable pontife de la Troisième République.’2 Of more significance in this context is another
2 Julien Luchaire, Confessions d’un Français moyen, vol. 2, 1914–1950 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1965), 81–2. See also Danielle Wünsch, ‘Einstein et la Commission internationale
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description that Bourgeois earned: ‘apostle’ of international intellectual cooperation.3 Speaking in his capacity as minister for public instruction in 1891 at a congress of savants, Bourgeois called for the institution of arrangements that would ensure that new discoveries in all those fields into which scientific method had penetrated were ‘systematically dovetailed into the existing body of knowledge.’4 In this context, Bourgeois’s motive was not solely pedagogical: he saw in the systematic integration of scientific knowledge a template for integration in the wider social arena. In a study called Solidarité (1896), Bourgeois sought to ‘establish on the scientific doctrines of natural solidarity a practical doctrine of moral and social solidarity,’ involving ‘a rule specifying the duties and rights of each in the interdependent action of all.’5
Bourgeois gave expression to such a doctrine as the premier French delegate at the Conferences of the Peace at The Hague in 1899 and 1907, where he enunciated the ‘principle of international solidarity,’ the actual and growing ‘solidarity of nations’ and the existence of a ‘véritable Société des nations.’6 Accordingly, the preambles to The Hague Declaration (1899) and The Hague Convention (1907) on the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes affirmed ‘the solidarity which unites the members of the society of civilised nations.’7 Bourgeois, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1920, elaborated on the thinking behind and implications of these pronouncements in a work appearing in 1910 entitled Pour la Société des Nations, stating therein that
ideas are also facts, or, as people say, forces. We speak of a politique réaliste: it is an incomplete, blind réalisme that does not hold account of ideas in the
de coopération intellectuelle,’ Revue d’histoire des sciences 57, no. 2 (2004): 509–20, 510.
3 Charles André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle (Rennes: Imprimerie Provinciale de l’Ouest, 1938), 41.
4 F. C. S. Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations: Its Conceptual Basis and lessons for the present (PhD diss., University of London, 1953), 243. F. C. S. Northedge cites a speech given by Bourgeois at the general session of the Congrès de Sociétés Savantes in Paris, May 27, 1891. See also Léon Bourgeois, Solidarité (Paris: Armand Colin et Cie, 1896), 13–4, classiques.uqac.ca/Cclassiques/bourgeois_leon/solidarite/solidarite.html
5 Bourgeois, Solidarité, 30.
6 Léon Bourgeois, Pour la Société des Nations (Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1910), 106, 167, 259. Emphasis added. See also Wünsch, ‘Einstein et la Commission internationale de coopération intellectuelle,’ 510–1.
7 Bourgeois, Pour la Société des Nations, 48.
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estimation of the apparent facts and in the calculations of the active forces … [P]ublic opinion acts each day more powerfully on the direction of general affairs and this opinion is more and more directed itself by two growing forces: one of the moral order, the increasing respect for the life of the human person; the other of the material order, the ever tightening economic solidarity of nations. These two forces tend to the same end: respect for the law and the maintenance of peace.8
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw an increasing number of international congresses of an intellectual character.9 A very important institution in this regard was the Union of International Associations (UIA), which was established in 1910 at what the UIA later described as the ‘First World Congress’ and in which 132 non-governmental international organisations participated. The key figures behind this congress were two Belgians, namely, Henri La Fontaine and Paul Otlet, both of whom had spent the previous two decades seeking to organise knowledge along the lines suggested by Bourgeois.10 Obtaining a membership comprised of 230 unofficial international associations by 1914 and in receipt of the support of the Belgian government and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the stated purpose of the UIA consisted in ‘the elaboration of a world organization, founded on law, scientific progress and technique, and on the free representation of out the common interests of humanity.’11 It is thus not surprising that after the war the UIA emerged, as stated by Sir Eric Drummond, the LON’s first secretary-general, as one of the staunchest supporters of the LON, a draft covenant for which the UIA had prepared before the war’s end.12 Indeed,
8 Ibid., 23–4. Emphasis added.
9 Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 241–2.
10 Union des Associations Internationales, Publication no. 98, August 1921, quoted ibid., 248. On role of La Fontaine and Otlet, see Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 244.
11 Mémoire de Secrétaire Général de la Société des Nations sur l’activité educative et l’organisation du travail intellectuel accomplies par l’Union des Associations internationals, 1921, quoted in Pham Thi-Tu, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations (Paris: Librairie Minard, 1962), 13. On the support given by the Belgian government and the Carnegie Endowment for the UIA, see Jean-Jacques Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée: La Société des Nations et la Coopération Intellectuelle (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1999), 13.
12 Jan Kolasa, International Intellectual Co-operation: The League Experience and the Beginnings of UNESCO (Wroclaw: Zaclad Narodowy im. Ossolinskich, 1962), 18.
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the UIA was described by contemporary students of the LON as ‘one of the chief pioneers of the idea of a League of Nations.’13
On February 5, 1919, the UIA presented a petition to the Peace Conference in Paris which called for the covenant of the proposed LON to include a charter for ‘Intellectual and Moral interests.’14 Although this petition had little impact, the Belgian government submitted to the Peace Conference on March 24, 1919, an amendment to the covenant to the effect that it would provide for an international committee on intellectual relations in order to promote the ‘development of moral, scientific and artistic international relations among diverse peoples and promote, by every means, the formation of an international spirit.’15 As this proposal also failed to elicit much enthusiasm, it was withdrawn by the Belgian delegate, namely, Paul Hymans, in the conference’s commission on the LON ‘without discussion.’16
There are a number of explanations for the lack of interest in such proposals. For example, H. R. G. Greaves, in his 1931 study of the committees of the LON, pointed to a desire on the part of certain delegates to the peace conference to not complicate the covenant with ‘unnecessary matter.’ As the conference proceeded, a view emerged in some circles, especially in American and British circles, that the nascent LON was already overburdened in an organisational sense.17 In relation to this last point, Henri Bonnet, a former member of LON’s secretariat who went on to replace Luchaire as director of the IIIC, noted that as a result of the war, the international community found itself facing major tasks in the fields of economic and social reconstruction and that in view of this, the conference endowed the LON with multiple technical organisations. As Bonnet further noted, although the war had severely disrupted intellectual life, the problems in that area were in
13 H. R. G. Greaves, The League Committees and World Order (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), 112 and André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 29–30.
14 Greaves, League Committees and World Order, 113.
15 David Hunter Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 2 (New York: G. B. Putnam’s Sons, 1928), 522. See also Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 17–8; Greaves, League Committees and World Order, 114; and F. R. Cowell ‘Planning The Organisation of UNESCO, 1942–1946: A Personal Record,’ Journal of World History 10, no. 1 (1966): 210–36, 219.
16 Greaves, League Committees and World Order, 113. See also Pham, La Coopération Intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 18; Cowell ‘Planning The Organisation of UNESCO, 1942–1946,’ 219.
17 Greaves, League Committees and World Order, 113. See also Kolasa, International Intellectual Co-operation, 19.
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some ways less visible than or were simply ‘overshadowed’ by the enormous problems in the economic and social areas.18 Finally in this context, we might note the observation of Nitobe Inazo, one of the LON’s first undersecretaries-general, that ‘a certain number of members—considered that the League of Nations was first and foremost a political organisation which should not dissipate its efforts to too great an extent.’19 Madariaga later stated that on this point the British were ‘adamant’: the British view was that the ‘League was to be a League, not a Society; it was to deal with peace and war, not with humdrum facts and relations between nations.’20
Irrespective of the attitude described by Nitobe and Madariaga, nongovernment organisations continued to pressure the LON to act in the field of intellectual cooperation. At the Third Conference of the Associations for the League of Nations in December 1919, representatives of the UIA won support for a resolution which demanded that the LON ‘encourage and direct initiatives in the domain of the sciences and of education.’21 Subsequently, the Paris-based European Council of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sent to the LON Secretariat a resolution adopted at the council’s meeting of February 15, 1920, which asked that the assembly fund chairs in international relations. It also recommended that the LON should play a leading role in the creation of an ‘international organisation for the promulgation of reliable and independent information with a view to preventing international conflicts.’22
On July 8, 1920, Paul Appell, rector of the University of Paris, communicated to Drummond the contents of a resolution passed by the French Association of the League of Nations at a meeting of its executive committee (of which Appell was president), on June 21.23 The resolution demanded that the LON establish as soon as possible an international office of intellectual and educational relations: ‘a permanent organisation
18 Henri Bonnet, Intellectual Co-operation in World Organization (Washington: American Council on Public Affairs, 1942), 4. See also Kolasa, International Intellectual Co-operation, 19.
19 Minutes of the Intellectual Committee on Intellectual Co-operation, 1923, quoted in Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 334.
20 Salvador de Madariaga, ‘Gilbert Murray and the League,’ in Jean Smith and Arnold Toynbee eds., Gilbert Murray: An Unfinished Autobiography (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1960), 194–5.
21 Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 13.
22 Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 274.
23 André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 31.
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of intellectual work, analogous to the one which existed for manual work,’ that is, the ILO.24
This resolution was accompanied by a draft convention which had been prepared by Luchaire (then chef de cabinet of the French minister of education), which outlined a detailed plan for what Luchaire referred to as a Permanent Organisation for the Promotion of International Understanding and Collaboration in Educational Questions and in Science, Literature and Art.25 Brussels and Paris were not the only sources of pressure: propositions regarding the creation of an organisation addressing intellectual cooperation emanated from associations and institutions based in Cracow, Geneva, London, New York, Oxford and Vienna.26 The first official steps in the direction of intellectual cooperation within the framework of the LON occurred when at the eighth session of a meeting held at SaintSébastien between July 30 and August 5, 1920, the Council of LON considered a plan submitted to it by the UIA.27 The UIA asked the council to support its plan for what it termed an International University: its plan for the convening of summer schools in Brussels with the purpose of fostering ‘an elite of some thousands of minds’ who would cooperate in the promotion of ‘international understanding and in the work of the League of Nations.’28 The UIA also requested a subvention to assist it in the publication of a Code des voeux et résolutions des congrès internationaux: a
24 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 20 and S. H. Bailey, International Studies in Modern Education (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), 5n. For a somewhat different account of the form of this resolution, see André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 31.
25 Kolasa, International Intellectual Co-operation, 20. For further discussion of Luchaire’s role, see Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 274–5 and Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 13. Jean-Jacques Renoliet notes that at its congress in Brussels in September 1920, the UIA called for an international conference to be held in order to draft the statutes of an international organisation for intellectual work. This idea was also taken up at the fourth conference of the League of Nations Associations in Milan in October 1920. See also André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 31. André points out that Luchaire was charged with this task at Milan.
26 Kolasa, International Intellectual Co-operation, 18.
27 André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 34, 37.
28 Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 13. See also Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 18 and Bailey, International Studies in Modern Education, 7n. Stanley Hartnoll Bailey points out that a so-called International University functioned between September 5 and 20, 1920, in Brussels. In attendance were forty-seven professors and one hundred students. The main focus of its syllabus was on (1) international questions of a legal, economic and technical character; (2) comparative studies of history and contemporary international
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publication involving the ‘coordination of the principal desiderata in all the domains of international life.’29
The discussion of these proposals at the council took place following a presentation of a report prepared by Bourgeois in the course of which he praised the UIA’s achievements and the service it had rendered to private international associations and acknowledged the utility of the proposed international university and its planned programme of studies. However, Bourgeois then stated that as this university had yet to be established, it would be ‘premature’ to accord to it League ‘patronage.’30 Rather, he suggested that the council should send to the UIA an ‘expression of all its sympathy’ for its new undertaking, wish it every success and authorise the secretariat to assist the UIA ‘in the measure possible, in the realization of … [this] … work of international interest.’31 Deferring to the opinions expressed by its ‘eminent rapporteur,’ the council decided to accord ‘moral encouragement’ rather than financial support to the planned international university. Nonetheless, the council agreed to allocate the funds requested by the UIA for the publication of the proposed Code des voeux et résolutions des congrès internationaux as it considered that such a publication would be of great value to the LON Secretariat and to the manifold private international organisations.32
On December 13, 1920, during the First Assembly of the LON and following a successful attempt by France’s Gabriel Hanotaux to ward off a proposed resolution authored by La Fontaine favourable to the teaching of Esperanto, discussion of the question of intellectual cooperation commenced.33 On that same day, a motion was put forward by delegates representing Belgium, Italy and Romania, suggesting that the assembly invite the council to pay close attention to the work currently being undertaken in the field of international intellectual cooperation, to possibly accord to this work its patronage and ‘to present to the assembly, during institutions; and (3) the League of Nations. For the history of the UIA’s proposal, see André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 34–6.
29 André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 34–6 and Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 18.
30 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 18–9 and Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation, 261.
31 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 19.
32 Ibid.
33 Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 14. Renoliet observes that Gabriel Hanotaux’s action was in order to defend the French language.
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its next session, a detailed report on the educational influence which they are called upon to exercise on the formation of a liberal spirit of understanding and world-wide co-operation.’34 Importantly also, the motion called upon the council to investigate the utility of establishing a technical organisation dedicated to the organisation of intellectual work.35 As this motion concerned the creation of a new technical organisation, it was sent to the assembly’s Second Committee, the mandate of which concerned technical organisations, for its consideration.36 The committee endorsed the resolution without hesitation and assigned the Belgian delegate, namely, La Fontaine, who remained secretary-general of the UIA, the task of reporting on the committee’s view to the assembly.37
The report that La Fontaine presented was entitled Report on the Organization of Intellectual Labour, and therein La Fontaine recalled the advances that had been made in the field of intellectual cooperation in the preceding decades and insisted on the need to ‘give more force and more power to human thought.’38 Most importantly, La Fontaine stated in his report that ‘there should be placed, at the crown’ of the LON’s technical organisations in the fields of labour, hygiene, economics, communications and transit, a technical organisation ‘devoted to the world’s intellect.’39
34 Actes de la Première Assemblée, Séance plenière, December 1920, quoted in Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 21. See also Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 278.
35 Actes de la Première Assemblée, Séance plenière, December 1920, quoted in Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 21.
36 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 21n, 24. Following a general discussion of the activities of the council, the LON Assembly at each session would distribute the questions that required examination among six committees. The First Committee addressed constitutional and juridical questions; the Third Committee addressed disarmament; the Fourth Committee addressed budgetary and administrative questions; the Fifth Committee addressed social questions and the Sixth Committee addressed political questions. Questions concerning Intellectual Cooperation were addressed by the Fifth Committee in 1921 and 1923, by the Second Committee in 1922 and from 1924 to 1927, by the Sixth Committee in 1928, by the Second Committee from 1929 to 1930 and then by the Sixth Committee from 1931 to the outbreak of the war.
37 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 19–21. See also André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 39.
38 Greaves, League Committees and World Order, 115.
39 Kolasa, International Intellectual Co-operation, 20. See also Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 21; Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 279; and André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 38.
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La Fontaine’s proposal met with lively resistance from George Nicoll Barnes, a delegate of Great Britain, who advised against encouraging intellectuals to come to the LON ‘demanding alms’ rather than seeking funds for their activities in their own countries.40 Barnes complained that creating an intellectual equivalent of the ILO, aside from being unnecessary given the ILO’s capabilities, would serve to reinforce the distinction between intellectual and manual work, a distinction which in a democratic age was otherwise ‘tending to disappear.’41 Despite these objections, the assembly adopted the report, passing a unanimous resolution in which it expressed its wholehearted approval of the ‘moral and material support’ that the council had accorded the UIA. It requested that the council should continue to ‘participate in a large measure in the efforts tending to realise the international organisation of intellectual work’ and that it should present to the next assembly a report in the form specified in the motion put forward by the Belgian, Italian and Romanian delegates on December 13.42
The council addressed the assembly’s resolution of December 18 on March 1, 1921, at its twelfth session. It examined two options in this context: whether the UIA should be transformed into a technical organisation of the LON or whether an entirely new organisation should be created. In the report adopted by the council which had been prepared by the Spanish delegate José María Quiñones de León, it was noted that before deciding on either of these options, it was necessary to know whether the LON’s members ‘were ready for an enterprise similar to the institution’ of the ILO and, assuming a response in the affirmative, whether the LON ‘disposed of sufficient financial means in order to support such an organization.’43
Based on views expressed at the First Assembly concerning LON expenses, the report concluded that ‘in the current situation of the world,
40 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 22. See also Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 279.
41 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 22 and Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 279. See also Hsu Fu Teh, L’activité de la Société des Nations dans le domaine intellectuel (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1929), 33.
42 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 19–22. See also Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 278–9 and Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 15.
43 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations 22–3. 1
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what can best favour intellectual co-operation is private effort … [and] … that the League can, for the moment, render a greater service to this cause in helping these initiatives, than in trying to organise intellectual work.’44 Such a conclusion would appear to have favoured the UIA option. It is thus noteworthy that at the council session of March 1, Bourgeois recalled Luchaire’s proposal for an office of education which would be charged with promoting the idea of international cooperation and which had been adopted by the Fourth International Conference of the League of Nations Associations in October 1920.45 This proposal, which was inserted in the report of Quiñones de León, was also adopted by the council, although financial concerns and a disinclination to expand the role of the LON suggested that it was unlikely that the plan for a new organisation would find favour in the end.46
At its thirteenth session on June 27, the council charged the secretarygeneral with preparing a report on these various options for the benefit of the Second Assembly. The resultant report comprised two detailed memoranda. The first of these memoranda elaborated on the activities of the UIA, noting its desire to collaborate with the LON and to even find a permanent place within that organisation.47 The second of the two memoranda ‘underlined the importance of international intellectual and educational collaboration, notably in what concerns the intellectual and moral development of national collectivities, scientific activity, and even in order to favour the development of the League of Nations.’48 In connection with this second memorandum, it should be noted that in his report to the council, the secretary-general insisted that the LON could not ‘pursue any of its aims, either the general aims of co-operation as laid down in the covenant, or even its more precise aims such as the campaign against the use of dangerous drugs and against the traffic in women and children, without, at every moment, encountering educational problems, and without being obliged to ask for active help from those engaged in education
44 Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 15 and Ministres des Affaires étrangères. 1921, quoted in Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 16.
45 Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 16.
46 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 22 and Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 16.
47 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 23. See also André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 40–1 and Hsu, L’activité de la Société des Nations dans le domaine intellectuel, 35.
48 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 23.
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in all countries.’49 At the same time, however, the secretary-general also determined that it would be ‘premature’ at this point to establish a new technical organisation. In order to ensure against an unnecessary duplication of work being undertaken by existing organisations, he suggested that a study of the terrain be conducted and that for this purpose a provisional consultative committee be established under the auspices of the council.50
Jean-Jacques Renoliet, the author of a comprehensive history of the OIC, points out that Drummond’s caution in this matter was a result of advice given to him by Jean Monnet, the under-secretary-general in charge of internal administration. Monnet suggested to Drummond that for reasons of cost and reasons of a non-fiscal nature, a proposal for a permanent organisation would ‘encounter the opposition of the assembly and particularly of the British Dominions.’51 Renoliet notes that such caution was deplored by Bourgeois, a feeling that was reflected in a report that Bourgeois submitted to the council entitled The Organization of Intellectual Labour. 52 Therein, Bourgeois contended that it was in fact international intellectual cooperation that had given birth to the LON, stating that ‘if an international intellectual life had not been long existent, our League would never have been formed.’53 Continuing in this vein, Bourgeois declared that ‘[n]o association of nations can hope to exist without the spirit of reciprocal intellectual activity among its members,’ and he called on the LON ‘to take steps to show how closely the political idea which it represents is connected with all aspects of the intellectual life which unites nations.’ Indeed, Bourgeois stated that the LON had ‘no task more urgent than that of examining … [those] … great factors of international opinion—the systems and methods of education, and scientific and philosophical research.’54 Nonetheless, Bourgeois took care in his report to ‘disarm the critics by deprecating ambitiousness’ and by restricting his recommendations to what was ‘immediately feasible’ in light of the
49 League of Nations [hereafter LON], Official Journal [hereafter OJ], no. 12. (1921), 1111. For the secretary-general’s statement in full, see Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 27.
50 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 23. See also Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 280–1.
51 Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 18.
52 Ibid.
53 LON, OJ, no. 12. (1921), 1105.
54 Ibid. See also Bonnet, Intellectual Co-operation in World Organization, 6 and Kolasa, International Intellectual Co-operation, 21.
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‘climate of feeling’ in the assembly at the time.55 Thus, irrespective of the title of his report, Bourgeois acknowledged that the situation of intellectual workers ‘fell more directly within the competence of the ILO.’56
The council adopted the reports of Drummond and Bourgeois at its meeting of September 2, 1921, and charged the latter with presenting to the Second Assembly a resolution he had drafted for adoption by that body.57 The text of this resolution invited the council to appoint a committee comprised of not more than twelve members, which would serve as a consultative organ of the council in regard to ‘the study of questions of international intellectual cooperation and of education.’58 It recommended that this committee would submit a report to the next assembly ‘on the measures that the League could take in view of facilitating intellectual exchange among peoples, notably in what concerns the communication of scientific information and methods of education’ and that it would undertake a study of the French plan for an international office of education as mentioned in the council’s report of March 1.59
The resolution was sent to the assembly’s Fifth Committee, which devoted itself to questions of a social nature, and was discussed by it between September 8 and 10, the discussion being based on the two memoranda prepared by Drummond and the report of Bourgeois. As a result of this discussion, the text of the resolution was modified in two ways. First, in order to forestall the misunderstanding that the LON was attempting to involve itself in the domestic affairs of states in the field of
55 Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 284.
56 Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 284. Hsu Fu Teh pointed out that a consultative commission charged with addressing ‘questions concerning the social and economic conditions of intellectual workers’ was established within the framework of the ILO in March 1927. Hsu, L’activité de la Société des Nations dans le domaine intellectuel, 76.
57 André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 40–1 and Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 23–4.
58 LON, OJ, no. 12. (1921), 1105. Northedge notes that the services of the members of the Committee were to be ‘unpaid, apart from travelling expenses.’ Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 287. See also Malcolm W. Davis, ‘Experiences of the Committee for International Cooperation,’ Journal of Educational Sociology 20 no. 1 (1946): 49–51. Siegfried Grundmann observes that the concept of ‘intellectual co-operation’ was first mentioned in the Bourgeois report. Siegfried Grundmann, The Einstein Dossiers: Science and Politics Einstein’s Berlin Period, trans. Ann M. Hentschel (Berlin: Springer, 2004), 176.
59 Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 24. The number was raised to 14 in 1924, to 15 in 1926, to 17 in 1930 and to 19 in 1937.
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education, the Fifth Committee eliminated the words et d’éducation from the formula, ‘questions internationales de coopération intellectuelle et d’éducation,’ a move which, however, did not prevent education becoming one of the ‘most fruitful branches’ of the OIC activities.60 Second and on the urging of Norway’s Kristine Bonnevie, it was decided that women should be included in the committee, thereby ensuring that in principle its composition would be in harmony with LON policy concerning equality of opportunity for men and women.61 Thus modified, the proposal was presented to the Second Assembly by Gilbert Murray, the Australian-born Murray serving on the occasion of that assembly as a delegate of South Africa and as the Fifth Committee’s rapporteur. On September 21, the Second Assembly unanimously adopted the proposal, and thus, the legal foundation for the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) was established.62
The assembly’s decision was ratified by the council on January 14, 1922, with the council allocating to the ICIC a modest sum transferred from the budget of the international bureaux section of the secretariat in order to cover the travel and other related costs of the members of the prospective committee.63 This allocation of funds was the result of a desperate compromise, the occasion for which was the registration by an Australian delegate of a vote opposing any funds being allocated to the ICIC on the pretext that intellectual cooperation was not mentioned in the Treaty of Versailles.64 In regard to its work, while the council envis-
60 Ibid., 24–5 and Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 18n, 285. Northedge records that Murray told him, Northedge, that Catholic influences were more important than political objections in regard to Intellectual Cooperation’s involvement in class-room activities. Bonnet simply notes that there were objections on political grounds and on grounds of religious freedom. Bonnet, Intellectual Co-operation in World Organization, 5.
61 On Kristine Bonnevie’s role, see Renoliet, L’Unesco oubliée, 19. On LON practice in regard to female representation, see Northedge, International Intellectual Co-operation Within the League of Nations, 286. Article 7 of the covenant declared the following: ‘All positions under or in connection with the League, including the Secretariat, shall be open equally to men and women.’ André, L’Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 43n.
62 In his report of the Fifth Committee’s deliberations, Murray echoed Bourgeois in stating that the future of the LON depended on the ‘formation of a universal conscience.’ Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 24–5, 27. See also Bonnet, Intellectual Co-operation in World Organization, 6–7.
63 Grundmann, The Einstein Dossiers, 176–7.
64 Ibid., 177.
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