116 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Permanent Committee on Letters and Arts, Paul Valéry, in order to
describe the work of the ICO. He stated in 1930 that from the very out-
set of the LON he had thought that a ‘Société des Esprits is the condition
of a Société des Nations and that the one and the other can have only
opinion as their unique and identical foundation.’^112
Further underscoring the importance attached by the ICIC to its
participation in the Paris exposition, in the previous year and with the
approval of the League Assembly, the ICIC had declared July 1937 the
‘Month of Intellectual Cooperation’. Against the background of this
declaration, the ICIC decided that certain activities of the ICO would
take place in Paris during that month, not least among these activities
being the annual plenary meeting of the ICIC. In order to show that
the ICO was not an ivory tower but had roots in national communities,
the ICIC decided that the second General Conference of the National
Committees on Intellectual Cooperation would be convened in Paris
between July 5 and 9. It should be noted that by 1937, there were forty-
four such committees, these being described by Herriot as the ICIC’s,
‘States-General’ (États-généraux).^113 According to a report issued by the
IIIC, the General Conference of the National Committees was the first
international meeting held in connection with the ‘Month of Intellectual
Co-operation’ in 1937 ‘to voice the fears felt in all quarters for the free
development of intellectual life’; it added that ‘in the weeks months
(^112) Paul Valéry, ‘Société des Nations et Société des Esprits,’ L’Europe Nouvelle,
September 20, 1930, 1349; L’ avenir de la culture: Entretiens de Madrid, May 3–7, 1933
(Paris: Institut International de la Coopération Intellectuelle, 1933), 284; ‘Intellectual
Co-operation and the Paris Exhibition 1937,’ League of Nations, International Institute
of Intellectual Co-operation, 1937 , 139–42. See also Société pour le Développement du
Tourisme, Exposition internationale arts et techniques, 91.
(^113) ‘Extract of the Report Submitted by His Exc. M. Parra-Pérez to the Seventeenth
Assembly of the League of Nations,’ and ‘Resolutions of the Seventeenth Assembly of
the League of Nations,’ in League of Nations, International Institute of Intellectual Co-
operation, 1936 (Paris: International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, 1937), 132,
136–37. See also League of Nations, National Committees on Intellectual Co-operation
(Geneva: Intellectual Co-operation Organisation, 1937), 5–6, 10. The first national com-
mittees on intellectual cooperation were formed in 1922. By 1928, the number of com-
mittees had risen to thirty-three. The first conference of national committees was held
in Geneva from July 18 to July 20, 1929, where it was agreed to establish closer contact
between the national committees.