Story of International Relations

2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 107

is significant in this regard....At the centre, a grand esplanade where one

encounters the silence of petrified crowds, a solitary voice amplified by

loud speakers [?] To the contrary, a parvis open on two sides, a place of

passage, of exchange, of pleasure: leaning on the parapet one discovers the

air and the light, the hum of Paris, the spectacle of the Seine, the Tour

Eiffel and the Champ-de-Mars.^77

Here, one might suggest that in its monumentalism, the palais served
as the architectural equivalent of a foreign policy of firmness.^78 As
Lemoine further stated, it was the sole building at the exposition ‘capable
of opposing itself to the mass of the German and Soviet pavilions.’^79 At
the same time however, the building, with its two vast wings inherited
from the old Trocadéro, may be viewed as offering a gesture of welcome
to the various national pavilions camped in the gardens and fields below.^80
In addition to its domestic socio-economic functions, the creators of
the exposition clearly intended that it would serve to reveal a confidant
French nation to the world. In this regard, it may also seem noteworthy
that the 1937 exposition did not fail to remind audiences that France
was a major imperial power. The Centre of Colonies was located on the
île des Cynges, an artificial island in the Seine located between the Quai
de Passy and the Quai de Grenelle. It symbolised in the context of the
exposition, the France d’outre mer. On exhibition at the ‘île des Cynges
and housed in separate pavilions, were the arts and crafts of the French

(^77) Bertrand Lemoine, ‘Le Palais de Chaillot,’ in Lemoine, ed., Paris 1937:
Cinquantenaire de l’Exposition internationale des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne,

89. The essential humanism of the Palais de Chaillot is further underscored by the inscrip-
    tion of verses written by Paul Valéry on each of the pediments of the two wings of the
    palais. One of these verses proposes that cultural enrichment stems from the individual’s
    desire for such enrichment while the other pays homage to the experience of artistic crea-
    tion. For further comment on the possible interpretations of the architecture of the Palais
    de Chaillot, see Chandler, ‘Total Disorder,’ in Confrontation: The Exposition internationale
    des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne (1937).

(^78) Schivelbusch, Three New Deals, 5. ‘The Palais [de Chaillot] symbolized France’s
self-perception as a major power, unwilling to back down before the two dictatorships, or
rather, firmly holding center stage while shunting its rivals off to the sides’ (ibid.). Ihor
Junyk notes that when French officials ‘became aware of the fact that many foreign nations
were tuning up their propaganda machines’ they decided that France ‘needed to compete
or risk being trumped at home.’ Junyk, ‘The Face of the Nation,’ 100.
(^79) Lemoine, ‘Le Palais de Chaillot,’ 98.
(^80) Ibid., 89.