260 J.-A. PEMBERTON
While many of the submissions concerning university teaching of
international relations to the Prague conference argued that the study of
international relations should focus chiefly on law, diplomatic history and
contemporary politics, a few contributions were striking for their emphasis
on the importance to the discipline of the study of psychology. Emanuel
Chalupný of the Československý Koordìnační Výbor pro Menzinárodní
Studia (Czechoslovak Coordinating Committee for International
Studies) and the author of The Character of the European Nations and
in Particular of the Germans (1934), argued that the ‘foremost place be
given to psychology,’ albeit ‘social not individual psychology’.^69
The notable interest in collective psychology at the time was inspired
by an understanding, as stated by a Polish delegate at the conference, that
animating the territorial and other material ambitions of certain states
were ‘great currents of thought’ and that these required closer examina-
tion.^70 In particular, many felt at the time that there was an urgent need
to investigate that form of collective psychosis which is the tribal lust for
war. For example, the British Medical Association at its annual assembly
in July 1937, had passed a resolution requesting that the LON’s Health
Organisation undertake a study of the psychology of war.^71
Early in 1938, against the background of the consideration of this
request by the executive committee of the LON’s Health Organisation,
the GRC had decided to commission Robert Waelder to conduct
a study under the heading of the Psychological Aspects of War and
Peace.^72 Waelder had already written at length on this subject in the
form of a letter entitled ‘L’étiologie et l’évolution des psychoses col-
lectives’ which was included in the third of the four volumes which
comprised the International Series of Open Letters (Correspondance)
sponsored by the Permanent Committee of Letters and Arts: L’esprit,
(^69) See for example Emanuel Chalupný, ‘The University Teaching of International
Relations,’ in Zimmern, ed., The University Teaching of International Relations, 33.
(^70) Bohdan Winiarski, ‘International Policy as a Science of International Relations,’ in
Zimmern, ed., The University Teaching of International Relations, 61.
(^71) Société des Nations, Organisation de la Coopération Intellectuelle, Comité exécutif:
Point XIII de l’ordre du jour—Psychologie de la guerre, 28 mars 1938, La Psychologie
de la guerre: Étude proposée par la British Medical Association, 1939–1940, AG 1-IICI-
B-V-10, UA.
(^72) Head of Publications, Geneva Research Centre, to Carl F. Remer, 23 February 1939,
AG 1-IICI-B-V-10, UA.