410 J.-A. PEMBERTON
to advance the welfare of the peoples of the world,’ the preamble to the
statute proposed by CAME did not mention the war at all, let alone the
intellectual or cultural background to it.^249
By contrast, the first paragraph of the preamble to the statute pro-
posed by France, commenced with the following declaration: the ‘world
war in which civilisation and humanity had almost perished has been ren-
dered possible by the abandonment of democratic ideas and the unchain-
ing of ideologies exalting in violence and proclaiming the inequality of
the races’. Accordingly, the same paragraph stated that it was the duty of
the United Nations to ensure that the principles of ‘liberty, equality and
fraternity that lie at the base of their Charter’ are triumphant throughout
the world.^250
Among the points of difference in respect to the content of the con-
stitutions proposed by CAME and France respectively, was that the
proposed French statute specified that the IIIC should serve as the sec-
retariat of the new organisation whereas the statute proposed by CAME
said nothing of the IIIC.^251 Although declaring that he did not wish to
claim for France a spiritually or intellectually privileged position, Léon
Blum, who was the leader of the French delegation and associate-presi-
dent of the conference, drew attention in London to what he described
as the French ‘tendency towards universality’ and its ‘age-long tradition
of generosity, of liberality in the sphere of thought’.^252 However, in light
of the growing acceptance at the conference that the new organisation
would have its seat in Paris, the French delegation (which also included
(^249) ‘Conference of Allied Ministers of Education: Draft Proposals for an Educational
and Cultural Organisation of the United Nations,’ in UNESCO Preparatory Commission,
Conference for the Establishment of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organisation: Held at the Institute of Civil Engineers, London, from the 1st to the 16th
November 1945, ECO/CONF./29 (1946), 1. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/
pf0000117626, UA.
(^250) ‘Projet français de statut de l’Organisation de Coopération intellectuelle des Nations
Unies,’ numéro spécial, Coopération Intellectuelle Internationale (b) (octobre–novembre
1945): 30–43, 30.
(^251) Ibid., 32.
(^252) UNESCO Preparatory Commission, Second Plenary Meeting, Thursday November
1st, 1945, at 2.45, Conference for the Establishment of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation: Held at the Institute of Civil Engineers, London,
from the 1st to the 16th November 1945, 28.