4 INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION IN WAR-TIME AND PLANS ... 369ideas and the need for ammunition for that war in the shape of concrete
schemes to give real meaning to the Atlantic Charter and to the phrase
Freedom from Want.’^67
He later recalled suggesting to the president ‘that it was necessary to
given them [the United Nations] something to do, something perhaps not
too controversial...such as an international agency for food and agricul-
ture.’^68 McDougall’s time in Washington concluded in October, following
the completion of a document that he had prepared in association with a
group from the Department of Agriculture: ‘Draft Memorandum on a
United Nations Program for Freedom of Want from Food.’^69 One of the
memorandum’s concluding observations was that at war’s end, the United
Nations must be ‘ready with measures and organisations to carry out its
pledges.’^70 Early in the following February, McDougall was excited to learn
that Roosevelt ‘had decided to summon the United Nations to their first
conference and that was to be on food and agriculture.’^71
tHe AmericAs And internAtionAl intellectuAl
cooPerAtion in wAr-time
As an institution, Intellectual Cooperation did not cease to exist entirely
during the war years. Between November 15 and 22, 1941, the Second
American Conference of National Committees of Intellectual Cooperation
(Segunda conferencia Americana de comisiones nacionales de Cooperación
intelectual), took place in Havana in Cuba. The origins of this conference lay
with two resolutions of the Second Conference of National Commissions of
Intellectual Co-operation in July 1937 in favour of ‘intellectual co-operation
of a regional character’ with a special emphasis on co-operation among ‘new
and distant’ countries. To this end, the Chilean National Commission organ-
ised the First American Conference of National Committees of Intellectual
(^67) McDougall, 1942, quoted ibid., 252.
(^68) F. L. McDougall, 1951, quoted in O’Brien, ‘F. L. McDougall and the Origins of the FAO,’
174.
(^69) Way, A New Idea Each Day, 269–70.
(^70) ‘Draft Memorandum on a United Nations Program for Freedom of Want From Food,’
1942, quoted ibid., 262.
(^71) McDougall, 1951, quoted in O’Brien, ‘F. L. McDougall and the Origins of the FAO,’ 174.