THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

Chapter
XII
GRADUAL DISINTEGRATION
THE MB
The Belgian government's resumption of the Palais Mondial
had extremely far-reaching consequences for Otlet's work.
It marked the beginning of an end. Afterwards there was never
any real hope that his vision of institutionalised synthesis could
ever become manifest, could ever become a powerful tool for
standardisation, co-ordination, and co-operation in intellectual
work. The actions of the Government, real in that they arrested
the work of the Palais Mondial, disarranged its collections, and
discouraged its personnel, had yet an even more important symbolic
meaning of abandonment, rejection, denial. Nevertheless,
it should be mentioned that the government at the very last
moment before the eviction from the Palais du Cinquantenaire.
promised that it would permit the UIA to resume its locations
there after the Fair, and made good that promise, though still
not admitting that the UIA had any permanent rights to them''
(a new eviction was threatened for 1925) ? Moreover, in 1926
the government finally admitted that its actions in 1924 had
been a mistake. As Otlet said when he reported the «vindication»
of the Palais Mondial to Godfrey Dewey, it had all been
«a sort of Dreyfus affair». 3 But what little comfort Otlet might
take from this must have been diminished considerably by the
government's almost permanent state of crisis which led to
constantly changing Cabinets. Indeed, shortly after the letter
admitting error had been written, a new government was formed
under the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, who had, in
effect, quashed all official proceedings on the resolutions of the
1922 Conference to Develop the Institutes of the Palais Mondial.
4 At the end of the Rubber Fair, Otlet now nearing sixty,,
and a few voluntary supporters began the work of returning the
UIA's collections to the Palais du Cinquantenaire. This time,
however, there was no government help, and the work proceed-
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