4 INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION IN WAR-TIME AND PLANS ... 389seemed to be an agreement that an obligation existed for a removal of
the sting of discrimination’ from current immigration laws.^153
Yet the question of the means by which this sting might be removed
was left largely unexplored. American members stated that popular
opposition to legislation repealing America’s ‘Oriental Exclusion Laws,’
which were driven, they claimed, by a concern to maintain living stand-
ards, might mean that such legislation would not win congressional
approval. Canadian, New Zealand and Australian members, also cited the
perceived threat to living standards that would be posed by a ‘substantial
influx of Asiatic peoples’ as the reason why a revision immigration polices
was not on the table in their respective countries.^154 The rapporteur of
the round table that addressed the issue of immigration discrimination,
observed that ‘the thorny problem of the immigration of Asiatic peoples
was cast about like a hot potato.’^155
tHe institute of PAcific relAtions: tHe Hot
sPrings conference
The next IPR conference was held at Hot Springs in Virginia and took
place from the January 6 to 17, 1945. The membership of the confer-
ence comprised men and women from the following countries: Australia,
Canada, China, France, India, Korea, the Netherlands and Netherlands
Indies, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom
and the United States. The French group, which in this instance was sub-
stantial, included three delegates from Indochina, and the British group,
which was even larger than the French group, included one delegate from
Burma. The leader of the USSR Council of the IPR had sent a cable to in
December 1944 expressing its regret that it could not pariticipate in the
conference. In his preface to what was intended as a preliminary report of
the ninth conference of the IPR, Horace Belshaw, then the IPR’s inter-
national research secretary, wrote that the principal reason why the USSR
Council had been prevented from fully participating in the international
work of the IPR, was that the Soviet Union was not at war with Japan.
Indeed, according to Belshaw, because ‘members of the Institute in all
(^153) Ibid., 75.
(^154) Ibid.
(^155) Ibid., 108.