THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

Anniversary. Each nation would also sign, as well as the
general treaty, special individual agreements in which its
particular commitments to each part of the Palais Mondial —
IIB, UIA, International Library, Museum and University —
would be spelled out. Resolutions conveying the term of the
text of the convention as adopted by the Conference were
addressed to King Albert and the Belgian government, the
League of Nations, and through Richardson, to America. 15
No action was taken on the resolutions of the Conference.
The Belgian government in 1923 refused to consider that it
had been officially represented, and also refused to distribute
the Protocols of the convention to participating governments.
This was an extraordinary volte face but explicable, Otlet
alleged, because of misrepresentation of the UIA's attitude to
Franco-Belgian policy in the Ruhr. 16
THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE ON INTELLECTUAL
CO-OPERATION
In May 1922, the Council of the League of Nations
finally appointed the members of an International Committee
on Intellectual Co-operation. The Belgian representative was
not Otlet or La Fontaine, as one might have expected, but
Jules Destree, former Belgian Minister for Arts and Sciences..
Destree's appointment placed him in one of the most select
gatherings in the world, for among his fellow committeemembers
were Henri Bergson, the great French philosopher,
Madame Curie-Sklowdowska, one of the discovers of radium,.
Albert Einstein, the physicist, and Gilbert Murray, a renowned
classical scholar at Oxford University. For Nitobe, reporting
to La Fontaine, Destree's appointment came as something
of a shock: «It has been a great surprise, and I must confess
a personal disappointment to me that your name was not
among the members*. 17 Gilbert Murray expressed a similar
view to Otlet but ventured an explanation. «May I take this
opportunity*, he wrote,
of expressing my regret that neither you nor Senator La Fontaine are
serving on the Permanent Committee. I understand, however, that
this is because the Council thought you could do more as expert witnesses
than as actual members, to guide the Committee in its deliberations.
18
La Fontaine did not regret being passed over by the
Council, and believed that his friendship with Destree would
be an adequate vehicle for UIA influence in the Committee.
Otlet's reaction was typical. He sat down and wrote an
Introduction to the Work of the Committee on Intellectual
Co-operation of the League of Nations 19 which he dispatched
as soon as it was finished in anticipation of the Committee's
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