THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

Leon Delacroix, they wrote, «our desire is to move in complete
agreement with your government, from whom we wish to
obtain the special support of legations, heads of missions and
various departments*. 45 Delacroix granted them an interview
in which various matters concerning the government, the
League and the UIA were discussed. It was a most successful
interview. Delacroix agreed to put the large Pare de Woluwe
on the road to Tervuren at the disposal of the UIA for the
erection of a Palais Mondial as its headquarters. The plans
for this edifice were entrusted to the government architect
and his preliminary sketches were described as «fully satisfactory
for the program developed*. 46 Moreover, Delacroix
asked for a draft notice about the UIA for transmission to
various Belgian representatives abroad and this was prepared
and sent to him a few days later. He also agreed to consider
recommending to Parliament that it grant an annual subsidy
for the support and use of the UlA's services. A minimum
annual budget was now assessed at 500,000 francs. 47
The resumption of the OIB's subsidy together with two
other events secured the UIA in a small measure against the
uncertainties of the future. On the 25th October 1919, the
Belgian parliament finally passed a law, first debated before
the War, to accord «civil personification* to international
associations. The law was gazetted in the Moniteur Beige in
November, and the first association taking advantage of its
protection was the UIA. 48 The Prime Minister had presented
the law in the Lower House in July 1919 specifically to be of
assistance to Otlet and to help achieve some of the desiderata
set out in A World Center at the Service of the League of
Nations, for, he declared, these desiderata had all his support.
49 Thus ended a long struggle for such a law, a struggle
in which Otlet, La Fontaine and the UIA had played no
small part.
The other event was a development stemming from negotiations
with the government for the provision of a central
location for all of the parts of the UIA and the various associations
federated with it. The government agreed to permit
Otlet to bring them all together into one wing of the Palais
du Cinquantenaire, in part of which the International Museum
had been set up after 1910.
The elections, which took place for the first time with
universal male suffrage according to the provisions of a new
law, changed the composition of the Lower House of the Belgian
Parliament «out of all recognition*. Both the Catholic
party and the Liberal party lost a large number of seats and
the overall Catholic majority disappeared in the face of socialist
gains.
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