3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 289[W]e can go a long way on the pathway toward permanent peace if at
the present time, even in war-time, we plan and think and give vitality to
those instruments and institutions which stand for world prosperity, world
health, world understanding in the intellectual field and the common her-
itage in the culture of the race.^167nutrition And tHe cHAnged economic
outlook At tHe leAgue
The League’s so-called technical activities intensified and widened in
scope at the very same time as its political activities entered a state of
eclipse. Its work on the problem of nutrition is a case in point. A prob-
lem which for a long time was handled chiefly by the LON’s Health
Organisation, in the latter part of the 1930s it came to be largely dealt
with by the LON’s Economic and Financial Organisation to the extent
that it concerned such matters as standards of living and the econom-
ics of consumption. The LON first broached the problem of nutrition in
1925 when, following a proposal by the Yugoslav delegation, the assem-
bly requested that the Health Organisation’s Health Committee study
‘the methods to be recommended in the interests of public health for the
regulation of the manufacture and sale of food products.’^168 In light of
this, the Health Section of the LON Secretariat published in 1926 a col-
lection of memoranda prepared by the director of the Imperial Institute
of Nutrition in Tokyo, namely, Saiki Tadasu, and his assistants: Progress
of the Science of Nutrition in Japan. The following year, Saiki gave lec-
tures on nutrition in Argentina, Brazil, Chile (the government of which
would receive on May 9, 1932, the LON Council’s assent to its request
for the assistance of the League’s technical organisations in studying pop-
ular nutrition in Chile), and the United States under the auspices of the
Health Organisation.^169
In October 1928, at the thirteenth session of the LON’s Health
Committee (a committee which contained ‘more experts from private
(^167) Shotwell, ‘International Organization,’ 23.
(^168) League of Nations, The Problem of Nutrition, vol. 2, Report on the Physiological Bases
of Nutrition (Geneva: League of Nations, 1936), 4.
(^169) League of Nations, Report on the Physiological Bases of Nutrition, 4. See also League
of Nations, League of Nations Health Organisation: Report to the Council on the Work of
the Twenty-Second Session of the Health Committee (Geneva: League of Nations, October
1935), 4. C. 426. M. 218.