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In early November, however, the Government requested
the Royal Academy of Belgium to examine the collections of
the Palais Mondial and attempt to evaluate their scholarly
worth independently of other judgments. The Academy reported
in January 1924 unfavourably. Representatives from the
Academy from both the Class of Literature and that of
Science had agreed the collections of the IIB had no value.
The collections of the Museum,, they agreed had some value,
but the representatives from the two Classes differed as to
how much. Outright condemnation would, no doubt, have been
unwise because Otlet claimed that the Museum had been visited
by over 50,000 people during 1923, a figure greater than
any to which even the oldest museums of the City could
point. 46 Moreover, their judgment was completely opposite to
that of the 1922 commission of academics whom the government
had set about the same task. On this occasion the Museum
was thought to be without value and the collections of
the IIB important. Otlet refused to accept the opinions of the
Academy, formed, he observed dryly, after an inspection of no
more than half an hour in the IIB's rooms and an hour and a
half in those of the Museum.
Late in November, Baron Ruzetti suggested that other locations
could be found for the Palais Mondial, and proposed
to make available some old abandoned railway engine sheds.
This offer was indignantly refused. As the year drew on, various
questions were asked in Parliament about what was to
happen to the Palais Mondial. A number of ministers, including
the Prime Minister himself, tried unsuccessfully within
parliament itself to influence La Fontaine, one of the Senate's
most respected figures, to agree to the UIA's eviction from
the Palais du Cinquantenaire without further fuss. Meetings
between Otlet and La Fontaine and Ruzetti and others were
arranged without agreement or compromise being reached.
Otlet, in desperation, wrote to Cardinal Mercier the eminent
cleric and Neo-Thomist who had been called, during the German
occupation, the «conscience of Belgium», to all the Heads
of Diplomatic Missions in Brussels, to the Belgium representatives
at the League, and he petitioned the King. Towards the
end of January 1924, Baron Ruzetti made a new offer of
alternate locations which would be appropriate for the Secretariat
of the UIA — a small, pleasant building tucked away on
a boulevard, Rue Joseph II, and undertook to ensure that any
of the UIA's collections not transferred to this location would
be carefully stored in an unused part of the Palais du Cinquantenaire.
Otlet regarded himself as having been a prey to political
victimisation. Why had the Government been so implacable?
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