The League on Trial (Routledge Revivals) by Beer Max;

Author:Beer, Max;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

Chapter XVI

Laughter

WE go but a few steps further, past a few more doors of this impressive first floor. And yet great is the change. We leave the department which rules the chairs with the thin leather covering on which the nations sit, and we reach the depart-Inent which rules the harmony of intellects. We cannot but envy the Under-Secretary-General and director of the department for international intellectual co-operation and international bureaux. However much the amiable Herr Dufour is annoyed by his slight inferiority to the Under-Secretary-General of the internal administration, the work he does behind his modest desk is infinitely above that of his colleague. “International intellectual co-operation I” We hold our breath while we move along the carpets of the silent corridors. Have we reached our goal at last? Is not international intellectual co-operation the League itself? Far from the shock of arms of a forgotten barbarism, and far from the calculating subtleties of an outworn diplomacy belonging to a lower form of intellect, it is our privilege to witness the co-operation of the moral forces of united mankind, our duty to watch the intellectual leaders of the nations. It is a solemn thought.

While taking a look around the offices of the department, we recollect that we are entering upon virgin soil on which the founders of the League had originally declined to tread. The idea of a republic of scholars and artists who, by tradition, stand above national frontiers clasping hands across a wartormented world is an old and solemn one; but the founders of the League eliminated it from the Covenant during the Paris deliberations, despite ingenious suggestions from Belgian quarters. They had found a place for hypocritical methods of administering annexed colonies, and for anti-opium measures, and this was to be the total task of organized mankind: the signpost which stood by the road to peace never indicated an intellectual or a cultural goal. The draft plan submitted by the conquered barbarians at Versailles had found a place for the cultural mission of the League; in its quality of international community of labour it was to undertake the task of serving the intellectual as well as the material advance of mankind. But this valuable suggestion together with all the other contri-butions humbly tendered by the Germans to the masters of the world were thrust aside by Clemenceau’s grey-gloved fist.

Did this idea possess such a compelling force that it inevitably recurred at the first meeting of the League Assembly as provided by the Versailles Treaty? The ancient Belgian pacifist and senator, Lafontaine; moved the adoption of international intellectual co-operation as part of the programme at Geneva, and the second Assembly (1921) adopted this motion after perusing a report produced by old Leon Bourgeois, Wilson’s senile successor. Hereupon an international commission for intellectual co-operation was formed which soon gave birth to numerous subordinate committees. In the different countries so-called committees for international intellectual co-operation were formed, a special section for interna-tional intellectual co-operation was created in the Secretariat,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.