THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

ation, and the Belgian government had to decide either to
abandon the Palais Mondial to a more hospitable country,
or open it again and support it. 49
Otlet, blinded by the intensity of his purpose, exaggerated
the interest of the World Congress in the Palais Mondial. But
his view of the world politics of the time was perceptive and
anguished. The government may have been influenced by the
fact of the Congress's expressions of esteem for Otlet and
La Fontaine to offer the Palais Mondial alternative quarters
in the Palais du Cinquantenaire late in 1938, but by then it
was too late. Otlet's belief in the efficacy of the Palais Mondial
and all it stood for in helping to promote peace and understanding,
remained steadfast as he observed developments in
European political situation. He expressed this view most
clearly in a letter to Donker Duyvis in 1936:
Hitler has become «well known» in Holland and Belgium. War or
Peace; an equal and just peace; economic, and social and intellectual
peace; ... once more ... the confrontations of opposing, repugnant,
bestial alternatives . .. which go on again . .. and again . .. and again.
Therefore from the C. D. (sic) to Documentation; from Documentation
to the organisation of intellectual work; from intellectual work to
Universal Civilisation. Therefore to realise them, that which is necessary,
commissions and institutions, and the bibliographic repertory,
and the Mundaneum; and the World Consitution, and the new League
of Nations; and the World City. 50
A LAST CRISIS
The Mundaneum remained closed, crowded, its materials
gathering dust, mouldering, useless. During these last years
Otlet appears to have become increasingly introspective. He
returned to a form of that self-communion which produced his
youthful diary. One can imagine him hunched over his desk,
surrounded by perilously balanced mountains of documents,
cards, books and papers, drawing before him some sheets of
paper to note down the thoughts that came as he contemplated
his life. In 1938 a little more than a week before his birthday
he reflected that soon he would be seventy, and La Fontaine
eighty-four. He had done, he thought, all he could to ensure
the future of their work although his had been essentially
a lonely, isolated position during all those years in which
he had developed the Palais Mondial. His thoughts turned
to Cato,, his wife, one of the few who had stood beside him
unwaveringly:
Cato, my wife, has been absolutely devoted to my work. Her savings
and jewels testify to it; her invaded house testify to it; her collaboration
testifies to it; her wish to see it finished after me testifies to it;
her modest little fortune has served for the constitution of my work
and of my thought.
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