3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 247an interim meeting to take stock and plan further study,’ was aggravated
by the approach it had adopted: that of selecting a single topic, prepar-
ing it over two years and then, following discussion of it, dropping it
for another subject. For ‘obvious reasons’ Condliffe told Kittredge, he
considered that the ISC should model itself far more closely on the IPR:
it should undertake research over the long-term on a range of topics and
discuss the most urgent of these as suggested by the research at a bien-
nial conference. Indeed, Condliffe stated that ‘[a]t this stage, in Europe
more than is necessary in the IPR,’ the role of research should be exag-
gerated: in Europe at that stage it was especially imperative to ‘build up
the conception of a meeting of individuals free from any responsibility
save that of scientific standards.’^23
With its future financial viability possibly in doubt, the criticisms of the
ISC submitted to the Rockefeller Foundation had to be taken seriously.
It was with these criticisms in view, that on November 5 and 6, 1937, an
international programme committee established by the ISC at its session in
Paris, met at the Palais Royal. Among those attending the meeting were
Davis and Condliffe, representatives of the national coordinating commit-
tees of Britain, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands
and Switzerland and representatives of the IIIC: Bonnet, Gross and
Vranek. Two observers were present: Whitton, who observed on behalf of
the American Coordinating Committe and Brinkmann who observed, on
the nomination of Berber, on behalf of the German Institute for Foreign
Policy Research.^24 As already noted, Brinkmann, had been a member of the
German delegation at the Sixth International Studies Conference which
took place in London from May 29 to June 2, this being the only other
occasion on which he had assisted at a meeting associated with the ISC. At
that conference, Brinkmann’s contention that the concepts of democracy
(^24) ‘La XIth session de la Conférence permanente des hautes études Internationales aura
pour subjet “Les Politiques Économique et la Paix”,’ Coopération Intellectuelle, nos.
85–86 (1938): 1–15, 1–2, and League of Nations, International Institute of Intellectual
Co-operation, 1938 (Paris: International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, 1939),
- For Vranek’s past and current occupations see Appendix D: Eighth International
Studies Conference, Department of International Politics, University College of Wales,
Aberystwyth, 1934–1935, Reports on Activities of the British Co-ordinating Committee
for International Studies, AG 1-IICI-K-VI-1, UA. International Studies Conference,
Peaceful Change: Procedures, Population, Raw Materials, Colonies, 633.
(^23) Ibid.