Story of International Relations

4 INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION IN WAR-TIME AND PLANS ... 367

on January 6, 1941 on the ‘ideal’ of the Four Freedoms and the inten-
tion to ensure the utmost cooperation among nations in the economic
field with the following objects in view:

[T]he enjoyment all states of access on equal terms to the trade and

raw materials of the world, the fullest collaboration between all nations

with the object of securing for all improved labour standards, economic

advancement and social security, the assurance that all men in all lands may

live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.^57

Having declared their complete agreement with the emphasis in the
secretary-general’s report on the work of the League in 1941–1942 on
the priorities of economic advancement and social security, the joint ses-
sion noted that the LON’s Economic and Financial Organisation and
its committees had long taken an active interest in the problems of free
access to raw materials and to the world’s trade on the one hand, and in
the question of social security and the raising of living standards on the
other. In regard to the organisation’s interest in the latter subjects, the
report drew particular attention to the ‘pioneering work on problems of
nutrition initiated by the technical services in Geneva in 1925.’^58

mcdougAll And PlAns Post-wAr reconstruction

As a member of the Economic Committee, McDougall attended the
London joint session and the Princeton joint session. McDougall attended
the latter session while on an extended visit to the United States where he
spent nearly all of his time in Washington conferring with key government
officials.^59 Way notes that against the background of his visit Washington
and the subsequent entry of the United States into the war, McDougall gave
up the notion of reforming the LON because this would ‘not be acceptable
to the US Congress or to the USSR.’^60 Nonetheless, he felt that the skills of

(^57) Ibid., 9, 14–15.
(^58) Ibid., 14–15.
(^59) Ibid., 3–4, and Way, A New Idea Each Day, 234. McDougall had visited Washington in the
summer of 1941 when serving as an Australian delegate to the International Wheat Conference.
(^60) Way, A New Idea Each Day, 240.