202 J.-A. PEMBERTON
conflict between France and Germany was ‘a conflict between two
verbs to be and to become.’^400
Touching on the question of the LON’s demise, was a closing speech
by John Foster Dulles who had served as chair of the conference’s study
meetings.^401 In his speech Dulles stated that over the past week his mind
had turned to another conference he had attended in Paris some years
ago: the Paris Peace Conference. He recalled that at that conference the
desire to re-establish peace was universal and that this desire had issued
in the League of Nations and then the Pact of Paris. That the feeling of
security induced by these developments had not been destined to last, he
stated, was because ‘the steps we had taken were inadequate and tended
excessively to perpetuate the status quo, and it became obvious that any
given status, however admirable it might be at the beginning, could not
be indefinitely prolonged without bringing about a clash with human
needs, which are constantly changing.’^402 A reversion to the war system
on the part of certain states was only to be expected, Dulles suggested,
as long as the world system remained ‘not sufficiently flexible to conform
to changing needs and equities.’^403 Indeed, Dulles observed that it was
now generally accepted that the war system was ‘the premise on which
national policy must be based.’^404 He pointed out that the reversion to
the war system was reflected in ‘elaborate provisions designed to ensure
neutrality’ in some instances and in the form of ‘formidable armaments’
in others, adding, that neutrality was no guarantee against being drawn
into a war once it had commenced and that formidable armaments could
(^401) Dunn, Peaceful Change: A Study of International Procedures, v–vi. John Foster
Dulles had earlier chaired a sub-committee of the American Coordinating Committee for
International Studies. This sub-committee directed a study of international procedures of
peaceful change which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The study in question
was authored by the sub-committee’s rapporteur, Frederick Sherwood Dunn, and was
one of a series of studies submitted to the peaceful change conference by the American
Coordinating Committee for International Studies. The other members of the afore-
mentioned sub-committee were Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Philip C. Jessup and Walter
Lippmann.
(^402) International Studies Conference, Peaceful Change: Procedures, Population, Raw
Materials, Colonies, 613–14.
(^403) Ibid., 614.
(^404) Ibid.
(^400) International Studies Conference, Peaceful Change: Procedures, Population, Raw
Materials, Colonies, 618. Emphasis in the original.