278 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Yet modern conditions also included the very important fact that peo-
ple, especially working people, were looking to the state for major social
transformation: for security against unemployment and for higher lev-
els of well-being.^127 Condliffe warned that it would be dangerous, both
economically and politically, for governments to pursue policies aimed at
countering such problems as unemployment on a unilateral basis. This
held, he stated, to the extent that unilateralism impaired international
trading relations or, at the extreme, conduced to war through the con-
struction of war economies in peace-time. Was it not possible, Condliffe
asked, to ‘conceive of an international co-ordinated and parallel pro-
gramme to achieve these objects without straining the delicate mecha-
nism of international relationship’.^128
Condliffe informed the conference that after working for six years at
the Financial Section, which he described as the ‘most effective organ-
isation for international economic research’ then in existence, the prin-
cipal impression that he had gained, was that the ‘best work done at
Geneva...was when those participating realised the necessity of a greater
degree of co-operation’.^129 Condliffe urged the ‘organisation of a sensi-
ble world based on knowledge,’ yet, due to his experience of the LON
and no doubt due to what he described as his New Zealand-bred prag-
matic disposition, he also well understood that technical work, however
‘important and well done,’ was not a ‘substitute for the discussion of real
political issues’ and the ‘facing of political issues.’^130
Condliffe lamented the fact that the League machinery had not been
properly exploited by governments as a forum for facing political issues
and for cooperation in order to resolve them. He told the Bergen meeting
that there was ‘never any moment when one felt that what was done at
Geneva was anything more than a registration of the decisions taken in
the national bodies’: major decisions at Geneva were shaped by national
situations, national policies and national institutions. The decision he
(^127) Ibid., 50, 65, 69.
(^128) Ibid., 219–20.
(^129) Ibid., 58–59, 89, 217.
(^130) J. B. Condliffe responding to comments on an address by Alexander Loveday, in
Alexander Loveday, ‘The Economic and Financial Activities of the League,’ International
Affairs 17, no. 6 (1938): 788–808, 808. For Condliffe’s self-description, see International
Studies Conference, Twelfth Session, Economic Policies in Relation to World Peace: A Record
of the Study Meetings Held in Bergen from August 26 to 29, 1939, 27, IICI/9/23, UA.