94 J.-A. PEMBERTON
the adherence of forty-three national committees and forty international
organisations and through them, the support of some four hundred mil-
lion people.^27 The French national congress of the IPC/RUP was held
against the background of the Exposition internationale des arts et tech-
niques dans la vie moderne. This exposition, which opened in Paris on
May 25, 1937, and ran until November 25 of that year, had as its two
predominant themes ‘Peace and Progress’. Given its theme of peace
and given the standing of the IPC/RUP as a major international peace
movement, it might seem unremarkable that the exposition’s general
commission invited the IPC/RUP to participate in the exposition in the
form of a Palais-Musée de la Paix.^28 However, it should be noted that
the invitation issued by the exposition’s general commission to the IPC/
RUP was not an unprompted one: it was Cot as air minister and Léon
Blum as prime minister who ultimately ensured IPC/RUP involvement
in the exposition. Indeed, according to Philippe Rivoirard, the first time
that the pavilion of peace was mentioned in the period leading up to the
exposition, was in a letter dated November 14, 1936, addressed to Blum.
This letter was signed by a number of prominent French figures among
them being Cot, who as we saw was joint president of the IPC/RUP,
Jouhoux, in his role as secretary general of the Confération générale du
Travail, Paul-Boncour, in his role president of the Associations françaises
pour la Société des Nations, and Paul Rivet, in his role as director of the
Musée de l’Homme.^29
(^27) Mazuy, ‘Le Rassemblement Universal pour la Paix,’ 42. See also RUP to the director
of the IICI, 4 August 1937, AG 1-IICI-B-V-4, UA, and Birn, ‘The League of Nations
and Collective Security,’ 149. See further Philippe Rivoirard, ‘Le pacifism et la Tour de
la Paix,’ in Bertrand Lemoine, ed., Paris 1937: Cinquantenaire de l’Exposition interna-
tionale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (Paris: Institut français d’architecture/
Paris-Musées, 1987), 313–34. Philippe Rivoirard states that there were forty national com-
mittees affiliated with the IPC/RUP and notes that they were located in the following
countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, China, Cuba, Denmark,
Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Hungary, India,
the Irish Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand,
Norway, Palestine, Poland, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria,
Turkey, the United States of America, Uruguay, the USSR, Venezuela and Yugoslavia.
(^28) International Secretariat of the RUP to IIIC, n.d., received by the IIIC, 24 November
1936, AG 1 IICI-B-V-4, UA.
(^29) Mazuy, ‘Le Rassemblement Universal pour la Paix,’ 42, and Rivoirard, ‘Le pacifism et
la Tour de la Paix,’ 308.