The League of Nations

The International Science and Art Department

THE TECHNIQUE OF INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE. •

To the question as to what is the principal result achieved by the League of Nations in the course of its nine years' activity there is only one possible reply. The League has established a habit and a technique of international conference.

The public has become familiar with the quarterly inter- national conferences on the occasion of the meeting of the League Council. But few even of those who take an interest in international politics delve into the Official Journal and follow the progress made in the various subjects which figure on the Council's agenda. For the Council is now far more than a meeting of Foreign Ministers to discuss dis- tinctively political questions, such as the relations between Poland and Lithuania. What was originally devised as a sort of standing concert of the Powers has become a bottle- neck through which there passes four times a year a stream of reports supplied by the permanent consultative committees on health, transit, finance, economic questions, child welfare, &c., not to speak of numerous bodies, resembling our own Royal Commissions, of a more temporary character.

Amongst these committees there is one, covering the domain indicated in the title of this article, which has rather a. special character. It is distinctive for more reasons than one. In the first place it is composed, not, as is the case with most other League Committees, of men and women actively.engaged in public life and representative either of Governments or of influential non-official agencies, but of scholars eminent in their own right. It is a matter of legitimate pride both to Englishmen and to Hellenists that the present chairman of a body, drawn from fifteen countries, on which the natural sciences, mathematics, history, law, and literature have distinguished representatives, should be the Professor of Greek at Oxford.

THE INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE.

The committee is also unusual for another reason : it is responsible for a precedent in League organization through the fact that part of its regular work is carried on away from Geneva. The other League Committees rely for the execution of their decisions upon the staff of the relevant section of the Secretariat or the International Labour Office. But in the case of this committee the staff available for the work in the Secretariat has never exceeded a " Director " and four " Members of Section "—the present figure and the tasks of execution, if execution there was to be, had neces- sarily to be carried out elsewhere. Thus it is that since November, 1925, thanks to the generosity of the French Government, what is, in function if not in fact, a section of the Geneva Secretariat has been installed in a wing of the Palais Royal, just round the corner from the Theatre Francais. It has, indeed, outgrown the proportions of a normal section of the Secretariat, for its numbers have steadily increased till they almost touch the century mark and it bears a title, since conferred on two other League bodies created at a distance from Geneva, of International Institute.

, Although it is the working organ of a League Committee it is not financed by the League but by subsidies from the French, and now from a number of other governments, and, though its accounts are examined by the League auditor, its estimates are not submitted to the Supervisory Committee. Moreover, when the Committee of scholars sits in its capacity as Govern- ing Body of the International Institute the French member, or, in his absence, his substitute, takes the chair.

But these deViations from normal Geneva practice are of minor importance. What matters is the work itself.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE SCHOLAR.

What has the League of Nations to do, it will be asked, with the arts and sciences ? The League of Nations is an organization for co-operation between governments, and scholars in all ages have had reason to fight shy of governments. Is there not a danger that learning may be dragged into the whirlpool of politics and that, to use the language of M. Benda, the " clerks " may be tempted to betray their vocation of intellectual integrity. Or the question May be _reversed and the governments may ask whether they have not been unwise in seeking advice from men of learning and whether, in setting up a modest Committee, they have not laid the foundations of something even more abhorrent to them than a super-state, namely, a super-academy. The second fear may be dismissed as wholly unreal. If there is any criticism to be brought against the Committee, it is not that of behaving like an academy but, on the contrary, of having been slow to develop a corporate consciousness. Fifteen scholars, drawn from fifteen countries and almost as many specialities, to sit together once a year for a week could hardly be expected to evolve a common doctrine of authority. As to the first danger, it would be idle to deny its existence, for it is only by, recog- nizing it that it can be kept at bay. But to say that is no more than to acknowledge that, in the world as it is to-day, with State systems of education, State-supported research, and State concern for the welfare of workers, whether by hand or brain, the scholar cannot remain a hermit but is called to play his part in public affairs, in his public affairs, like his fellows in other occupations.

HIS PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

As to what are his public affairs, there is little space hens for more than a cursory enumeration. The " sections " into which the Institute is divided provide a convenient scheme. There are legal questions of which the two chief are copyright in its numerous ramifications and the problem of what is known as " scientific property." Both these have been the subject of prolonged discussion and examination. The attempt to establish a claim for a scientific thinker on a portion of the profits derived from the practical applications of his thought, has reached the stage of a draft international convention, in the drawing up of which the Economic Com- mittee of the League has had a share. The whole question of copyright has recently been exhaustively under review at a diplomatic conference held in Rome where for the first time the so-called droit moral of an author over the uses to which his work is put was definitely recognized. Recent developments in reproduction, notably the cinema and broadcasting, have brought into existence a host of new problems for which creative writers and artists need to co- operate and to think out common policies before the next Conference meets in Brussels in 1935.

In the sphere of University relations a small central office, or rather clearing house, has been set up and many valuable contacts established. Thus there are now annual confer- ences, held under the auspices of the League, of what may be called the Foreign Relations Departments of the University systems of various countries, and of the principal inter- national students' associations. A third Conference group was formed last year by a meeting of representatives of institutions engaged in the study or discussion of inter- national affairs. The second conference of this series will - be held in London on March 11th next on the invitation of the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

In the field of learning proper, or what is called scientific relations, the chief tasks in hand are bibliographical. As result of a conference between librarians, for which both Sir Frederick Kenyon and Dr. Cowley of the Bodleian crossed. the Channel, a clearing house has been set up to deal with inquiries from national library centres for books in foreign libraries. Conferences of editors of learned reviews in order to promote bibliographical co-ordination have also been held for physics, biology, the social and economic sciences; Graeco-Roman antiquity and linguistics, and one for Romance philology is in process of arrangement.

In the field of art, the main achievements have been the establishment of an international museum organizationk on which Sir Cecil Harcourt Smith is the British representative; and the holding, last October at Prague, of a Congress of Popular Arts.

.There is work enough to be done by an internationat, Science and Art Department, even when it labours under a name so provocative, in its English dress, of the mockery of the Philistinis as the League of Nations Institute of Intel.;