2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 129non-Americans joining the board were Bonnet and Bourquin. Another
European joining the board was Berber who, according to Whitton,
in addition to being the director of the Institute for Foreign Policy in
Hamburg, was the director of the German Coordinating Committee of
the International Studies Conference. Whitton’s claim that the German
committee that he mentioned was of the International Studies Conference
was incorrect to the extent that no German committee had been a direct
member of the ISC since 1933. Also invited to join the board were the
following: Dennery who, as we have seen, had been an expert advisor to
the Lytton Commission but was now general secretary of the Centre de
étude de politique étrangère and the ISC’s secretary-rapporteur on the
study of raw materials and markets; Christian L. Lange, director of the
Norwegian Coordinating Committee for International Studies (Norsk
Komité for Internasjonale Studier) the address of which was the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs in Oslo, former secretary of the Inter-Parliamentary
Union and delegate of Norway to the Disarmament Conference; the
secretary of the RIIA, namely Macadam; and Rappard, director of the
Mandates Section of the LON Secretariat from 1920 to 1925 and mem-
ber of the Permanent Mandates Commission.^154
The board of the reconstituted GRC board met for the first time
on December 14, 1936, whereupon it approved a draft constitution,
thereby taking control of the centre from the aforementioned commit-
tee of Americans.^155 For a reason that will become clear, it is useful to
keep in mind that Article 5 of this constitution specified the following:
that the ‘Centre, as an organization shall not express an opinion on any
controversial aspect of international affairs. It shall carry on its work in
a spirit of international cooperation, and in all its activities shall remain
strictly, scientific, impartial and objective’.^156 By the end of the third
week of January, following the granting of a number of fellowships, the
(^154) Geneva Research Centre: Study January 22, 1937, AG 1-IICI-K-V-3, UA;
International Studies Conference, Peaceful Change: Procedures, Population, Raw Materials,
Colonies, 631, and Potter, ‘League Publicity: Cause or Effect of League Failure,’ 399.
(^155) Geneva Research Centre: Study, January 22, 1937, AG-IICI-K-V-3, UA. See also
Berber to Bonnet, 26 November 1936, Conférence permanente des hautes études interna-
tionales: Groupe international d’études pour les questions [coloniales] sociales [sic], du 1er
septembre 1936 au 1er janvier, 1937, AG 1-IICI-K-I-18.d.
(^156) Geneva Research Centre, Draft Constitution, Geneva Research Centre, AG
1-IICI-K-I-16.a.