2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 137Rapporteur, the Chairman of the Executive Committee [of the ISC], the
Director of the IIIC ...” and his two or three representatives, plus “a
secretary from the staff of Institute’s Social Sciences and International
Relations Service”.’^177
Chalmers Wright accused Gross of attempting to ‘thrust’ on mem-
bers a body of such a nature that their autonomy would be undermined:
members would ‘find themselves in the position of receiving sugges-
tions from the centre rather than of making them to the centre.’^178 In
the same letter, Chalmers Wright reminded Gross that in a letter Gross
had sent to him on February 16, Gross had made mention of Chalmers
Wright’s complaints concerning the ‘unsatisfactory’ nature of the prepa-
rations for the conference on peaceful change and the ‘defective condi-
tion’ of the ISC’s secretariat at the IIIC.^179
Oliver Jackson was a Briton who had been appointed to the IIIC
alongside Gross and a French national named Alfred R. Max, in late
1936 in view of a grant made to the IIIC by the Rockefeller Foundation.
As of February 1937, as Chalmers Wright reminded Gross in his letter of
February 21, Jackson enjoyed the role of secretary of the ISC. In a letter
dated March 28 which was addressed to Jackson, Chalmers Wright, after
having expressed frustration with certain decisions taken by the IIIC in
regard to the method of funding conference participants, went on to
express his dismay at what he saw as the paucity of guidance that had
been given by the conference’s centre in regard to the preparations for
the conference. Above all in this regard, Chalmers Wright lamented the
fact that Bourquin in his role as general rapporteur had failed to clarify
the question as to whether or not the Paris session would be the ‘final
(^177) Chalmers Wright to Gross, 21 February 1937, Comité consultatif de recherches,
1937, AG 1-IICI-K-I-19.
(^178) Ibid.
(^179) Chalmers Wright welcomed Gross’s admission that the ISC’s executive committee at
a meeting held approximately ten days before Chalmers Wright sent Gross his letter dated
February 21, while generally in agreement on the utility of the proposed advisory research
committee, had left in abeyance the question of its size as there had been a difference opin-
ion on this matter. Chalmers Wright stated in this regard the following: ‘This difference of
opinion which you would dismiss as a triviality is the most encouraging admission of your
letter...for it disposes me to think that some of the members of the Committee experienced
apprehensions similar to my own and that they sought to indirectly inhibit “authoritarian”
tendencies—the self-conscious term is yours not mine—by ensuring at any rate a wide rep-
resentation on the body which was being thrust upon them’ (ibid.).