2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 117that followed, there was not a meeting which did not have occasion to
denounce the obstacles encountered today by the works of the mind.’^114
Another of the ICO’s activities that took place in Paris during the
Month of Intellectual Cooperation was a conversation entitled Le destin
prochain des lettres. Given the expression of fears at the time concern-
ing the free development of intellectual life, the future destiny of letters
was a particularly apt choice of subject and it should be noted that at
the very time when this conversation was conducted an exhibition conse-
crated to books and letters was being held at the Palais de Chaillot. The
conversation on the future destiny of letters was the eighth in a series
of nine ‘Entretiens’ or ‘Conversations’ held by the ICIC’s Permanent
Committee of Letters and Arts between 1932 and 1938. Noted for the
participation in them of many leading intellectuals, these conversations,
as Jean-Jacques Renoliet points out, were centred on the question of
the destiny of culture and civilisation (chiefly that of Europe), and were
intended to affirm an essential humanism. Notably, the first of these con-
versations was held at Frankfurt am Main in May 1932 under the head-
ing of Entretiens sur Goethe à l‘occasion du centenaire de sa mort.^115 At
Frankfurt, Goethe’s birth-place, Murray had declared the following:
The differences which exist between one nation and another have a value
in themselves: they help to enrich the total heritage of humanity. They do
not contain any intrinsic element of mutual antagonism. It is the misfor-
tune of this sick and misguided epoch that the sentiments of affection that
we attach to our diverse homes are today inseparable from that idol cov-
ered with blood, the independent sovereign State with its powerful armies
and immense navies, its suspicions and blind hates and the incessant tor-
ture of its terrors.^116(^114) ‘General Introduction,’ in League of Nations, Intellectual Co-operation, 1938 (Paris:
International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, 1939), 3.
(^115) Renoliet, L’UNESCO oubliée, 317–18. The seven other entretiens were as follows:
L’avenir de la culture (Madrid, May 1933); L’avenir de la esprit Européen (Paris, October
1933); L’art et la réalité: l’art et l’État (Venice, July 1934); La formation de l’homme
moderne (Nice, April 1935); Vers un nouvel humanisme (Budapest, June 1936); Europe-
Amérique latine (Buenos-Aires, September 1936); and La qualité de la vie moderne (Nice,
October 1938). The conversation at Nice in 1938 was the only one of the eight entretiens
which went unpublished. The seven which were published, were published by the IIIC.
(^116) Gilbert Murray, ‘Goethe et le monde anglo-saxon,’ in Entretiens sur Goethe à l‘oc-
casion du centenaire de sa mort (Paris: Société des Nations, Institut International de la
Coopération Intellectuelle, 1932) 77.