206 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Dulles insisted that these three powers all desired peace. According to
him, the hesitations of Germany, Japan and Italy in regard to post-war
peace plans stemmed from the fact that they felt that their ‘potentiali-
ties...[were being]... repressed’ by those plans: they wished to ‘keep
open the avenues of change’ that those plans seemed to deny.^421 On the
ground that crises arise ‘through the intensification of opposing forces
for change and stability,’ Dulles urged the satisfied states to agree to
revise those treaties which were proving unduly repressive and the dissat-
isfied states to exercise restraint.^422
Although warning against the introduction into international affairs
of too much treaty law on the ground that it conduced to rigidity,
Dulles conceded that in the context of international affairs a significant
degree of rigidity, most especially in relation to territorial boundaries,
could not be avoided. He went on to argue that the potentially explo-
sive consequences of territorial rigidity could be attenuated through
promoting ‘economic fluidity.’ Dulles maintained that the freeing up of
the movement of people, goods and capital would forestall the need for
‘evolutionary forces...[to]...find satisfaction only through changes of
boundaries’ and that a large measure of ‘international flux’ in the form
of the free movement of peoples, goods and capital could be introduced
into the international system ‘without shock to national boundaries.’^423
That certain of the concepts and terms employed by Dulles in his
account of international affairs were reminiscent of the concepts and
terms employed in the context of Bergson’s ‘Philosophy of Change’
was no coincidence: Dulles had studied under Bergson at the Sorbonne
following the completion of a degree in philosophy at Princeton in
1908.^424 Stephen Kinzer notes that from his studies under Bergson,
Dulles had ‘picked up the concept of “dynamic” forces in eternal conflict
with “static” ones,’ and that in the 1930s ‘he began describing France
and Britain as “static” societies, interested only in defending what they
had, and predicting that the future would be shaped by three newly
(^422) Ibid.
(^423) Ibid., 499.
(^424) Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World
War (New York: Henry Holt and Company), 16. For Bergson’s description of his philos-
ophy, see J. Alexander Gunn, Bergson and His Philosophy (London: Methuen, 1920), 13.
(^421) Ibid.