3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 283given how mindful they were of the harsh criticisms to which its 1937
conference on the subject of peaceful change had given rise.^145
By 1939, the ISC’s work on the topic of peaceful change had become
something of an embarrassment. This was not simply due to the poor
quality of many of the memoranda submitted to the conference on the
subject of peaceful change and the woeful character of much of the
debate that took place in Paris in 1937. Colonial Questions and Peace was
a survey of the work undertaken by the ISC in regard to colonial ques-
tions. The survey was compiled by Moresco and published by the IIIC in
1939 at some point just before the war broke out. At the head of the title
of the book appeared the following: International Studies Conference:
Peaceful Change. Moresco observed in the opening sentence of the pref-
ace to the book that ‘[s]eldom will a book seem so hopelessly out of date
on the day of publication as the present volume on the colonial aspects
of the problem of Peaceful Change.’ Having observed this, he posed the
following question: ‘Could anything...nowadays have a more out-of-date
appearance than the memoranda prepared for the 1937 Conference?’ By
way of explaining how the book had come into being, Moresco noted
that in 1935, when peaceful change was chosen as the subject of the
ISC’s next study cycle, ‘important sections of public opinion were pre-
pared, and indeed anxious, to consider the possibility of allaying the
growing international unrest by giving satisfaction to genuine grievances
against the territorial and economic status quo.’^146
Moresco further noted that since that time, ‘many changes, involv-
ing the disappearance of several independent States’ had taken place and
that although these changes had ‘occurred without formal war’ they were
‘very unlike the “peaceful change” which the 1935 Conference had in
mind.’ Indeed, Moresco observed that it seemed that in light of the polit-
ical developments that had occurred since 1935, the expression peaceful
change had ‘lost all meaning’: the ‘widespread conviction’ now was that
‘concessions would serve only to strengthen opponents who are bound
soon to become open enemies in an unavoidable struggle.’^147
From that perspective, Moresco conceded, a study which took seriously
the claims of the so-called have not states to new or former colonies insofar
(^145) Gross to Condliffe, 8 December 1939, AG 1-IICI-K-I-25.c, UA.
(^146) Moresco, Colonial Questions and Peace, 13.
(^147) Ibid., 13.