THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

fiad indicated sympathy for Otlet's projects and provided
government support for them, resigned in the autumn of 1920.
He was replaced by an acquaintance and colleague-at-law of
Otlet's, the Comte Henri Carton de Wiat whose equally brief
government has been described succinctly as «incompetent in
a dignified manner». 3 New general elections were held late
in 1921 and resulted in the King inviting the Catholic Party
leader, Georges Theunis, to form another coalition government.
The socialists, protesting the term of compulsory national
military service, refused to be part of it and the pattern of
subsequent governments in Belgium was set: «a series of
•coalition governments with only occasionally one political
party in sufficient strength to govern for a short spell on its
own*. 4 Seven governments then followed one another in the
•space of twelve years. Though the various governments during
this time enacted a number of progressive social welfare and
industrial measures, the inflationary economy continued to
deteriorate until 1926 when national bankruptcy seemed
imminent. Stringent financial measures were then introduced
which provided a few years of stability before the maelstrom
of the Depression. Any fillip to the economy possible from
a commercial fair must have appeared most welcome to the
government and the Pare and Palais du Cinquantenaire, site
of the 1910 Universal Exposition of Brussels, were an ideal
place to hold one. Located in the buildings of the Palais du
Cinquantenaire were some of the Musees Royaux and the
Palais Mondial. The latter, occupying a hall where seasonal
exhibitions of paintings had been regularly held in the past,
had excited ridicule in some quarters. In yet others there
were anger and resentment that the rooms of the Palais
Mondial had been made available for the Pan-African Congress
of 1921. Otlet, himself, no longer had the ear of prominent
government officials. There was a new generation in power
and, from his own admission, they had been content to pass
him by. His «mondial» ideas were widely misunderstood and
many, no doubt, regarded him as an eccentric, amiable and
harmless or infuriating and possibly dangerous according to
the kind and frequency of the demands he made on them. The
dispossession, therefore, by the government of the area occupied
by the Palais Mondial in the Palais du Cinquantenaire seemed
logical enough. It was far less likely to arouse popular opinion
than the removal of the older, more respectable Musees Royaux.
As Theunis, the Prime Minister, observed decisively «the organisation
of the Palais Mondial, occupying its location without
any legal right, can certainly be asked to make way for a
Commercial Fair». 5
Nevertheless, Otlet and La Fontaine, Premier Vice-President
of the Senate and Nobel Laureate, were able to bring
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