THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

La Fontaine and Otlet hitherto owes its success to these two
personalities, and the question of further control is as great
a cause of uncertainty as the question of material resources*.
At this time Otlet was 53 and La Fontaine 67. This most
revealing comment was, however, obscured by the final remarks
of the Secretary-General:
Surveying as a whole the picture we have just drawn, the work of
the founders of the Union of International Associations, a work of
documentation and information, of co-ordination of effort, of general
education, appears as a vast enterprise of international intellectual
organisation characterised by the breadth of its conception and design.
Its action is two fold as regards principles: it owes to the logical
force of the ideas which it has brought forward an educative influence
which is highly conducive to the development of the ideas of union
and international organisation. As regards facts, it has proved its
efficiency by the institutions which it has created. The Union of International
Associations, its Congresses, the publications connected
with them, and the International University, form particularly effective
instruments for the «diffusion of a broad spirit of understanding and
world-wide co-operation. The League of Nations should regard these
institutions to-day as most valuable organs of collaboration*.
Though the Council had decided earlier in the year that
it would be «premature to create a technical organisation
attached to the League», 52 the matter was raised again in
the Council on September 2nd, 1921 by the French member,
Leon Bourgeois, who had been studying it at the Council's
request. A few days later, in the name of the Council, he placed
before the Assembly a draft resolution in which he proposed
that a committee, consisting of not more than twelve members
and containing both men and women, should be appointed
to study «the means of simplifying, strengthening and extending
the international intellectual relations that already
existed*. 53 Gilbert Murray, Professor of Greek at Oxford and
delegate of South Africa, was rapporteur for the Assembly
Committee appointed to examine the proposal. In the course
of his remarks to the Assembly he paid tribute to «that monument
of international industry which we owe to Mr. La
Fontaine and Mr. Otlet, the Centre International established
at Brussels*. 54 On the recommendation of Murray's committee,
the Assembly approved Bourgeois resolution.
The Council did not hurry to make any appointments to
the committee, but as the year drew to its close, Otlet and
La Fontaine must have felt themselves nearer to achieving
their goal of a technical organ at the League concerned with
intellectual matters. The matter was before the Council and
required some action before the third Assembly convened in
1922. The only major problem Otlet and La Fontaine seemed
to face at this time was the Code des Voeux. At the beginning
of October, Nitobe asked La Fontaine what was happening to
it. He had been sent some time earlier some specimen pages
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