390 J.-A. PEMBERTON
other member countries’ had been ‘publicly committed to the defeat of
Japan, the Soviet IPR leaders’ had expressed the desire ‘to be released
temporarily from active participation.’ Also militating against Soviet rep-
resentation was fact that, as in other countries, almost all the country’s
‘scientific personnel’ had been recruited to the war effort.^156
Like the conference at Mont Tremblant, numerous government and
political figures participated in the conference at Hot Springs and again,
many of these were former IPR members seconded to government for
the duration the war. According to Holland, their presence ‘added to
the substance of this gathering.’^157 Observers at the conference included
the League of Nations’ Secretariat in the form of two representatives
of the Economic, Financial and Transit Department, one of whom was
Loveday. It was the eighth and final occasion on which the League would
be represented at an IPR conference. Reflecting the changing framework
of international organisation, three observers of from the United Nations
Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) attended the confer-
ence, two of whom were from its Far Eastern Division.^158
The Hot Springs conference took place at a time when victory in
Europe and the Pacific was certain and against a background in which
the foundations of a new world order were being laid. Indeed, it was at
the very same hotel where the IPR’s 1945 conference took place, that
between May 18 and June 3, 1943, the United Nations Conference on
Food and Agriculture ‘met to consider the goal of freedom from want in
relation to food and agriculture’ and lay the basis for a permanent organ-
isation which would ‘aim to insure higher standards of nutrition and
improved agricultural efficiency rural welfare.’^159
The hotel in question was the Homestead Hotel which, accord-
ing to Holland, was luxurious. Earlier, the hotel had been the place of
(^156) Horace Belshaw, preface to International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations,
Security in the Pacific: A Preliminary Report of the Ninth Conference of the Institute of
Pacific Relations, January 6–17, 1945 (New York: Comet Press, 1945), v–vi.
(^157) ‘The Memoirs of William L. Holland,’ in Hooper, ed., Remembering the Institute of
Pacific Relations, 38.
(^158) ‘Appendix 3: Conference Membership,’ International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific
Relations, Security in the Pacific, 160.
(^159) United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture, Hot Springs, Virginia, May 18–June
3, 1943: Final Act and Section Reports (Washington: United States Government Printing
Office, 1943), 1, and International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, foreword to
International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, Security in the Pacific, 1945 , x.