416 J.-A. PEMBERTON
However, as Cowell later pointed out, he was confined instead to being
‘little more than a spectator’: Zimmern’s formal position as of May 1946
was that of technical counsellor.^273 At this point, Lady Zimmern pro-
ceeded to energetically campaign on behalf of her husband, an under-
taking which, as Cowell diplomatically put it, gave rise to ‘difficulties’.^274
John and Richard Toye note that these so-called difficulties encompassed
efforts by the Zimmerns to generate fears concerning Huxley’s ‘political
reliability.’^275 In light of this, Huxley informed the executive board that if
Zimmern remained in Paris he, Huxley, would resign.^276
Thus, in early October, the executive board charged Zimmern with
a special mission: he was to ‘pay particular attention to the question of
the establishment of a plan for world peace through the study of interna-
tional questions.’^277 This mission meant that Zimmern was absent from
later meetings of the Preparatory Commission. He returned to Paris only
at the time of the inauguration of UNESCO’s General Conference.^278
It was doubtless this disappointment and not simply his jaded feelings
about European international relations and excitement at the prospect of
an America-lead new world order, that caused Zimmern to move to the
(^273) Cowell, ‘Planning the Organisation of UNESCO, 1942–1946: A Personal Record,’
- See also ‘Nominations,’ Coopération Intellectuelle Internationale, nos. 3–4 (1946):
1–4, 1–2; ‘Au Comité Éxecutif de la commission d’U.N.E.S.C.O.,’ Coopération
Intellectuelle Internationale, nos. 3–4 (1946): 5–8, 5, and Sewell, UNESCO and World
Politics, 86.
(^274) Cowell, ‘Planning the Organisation of UNESCO, 1942–1946: A Personal Record,’
230.
(^275) John Toye and Richard Toye, ‘One World, Two Cultures? Alfred Zimmern and Julian
Huxley and the Ideological Origins of UNESCO,’ History 95, no. 319 (2010): 308–31,
310, 326. Alfred and Lucie Zimmern apparently encouraged the idea that Huxley was a
communist sympathiser.
(^276) Toye and Toye, ‘One World, Two Cultures?,’ 326.
(^277) Alfred Zimmern, 1946, quoted in UNESCO, ‘General Conference, First Session,
Paris, 20 November–10 December 1946, Programme Commission II, Sub-Commission
on Social Sciences, Philosophy and Humanistic Studies,’ C/Prog.Com./S.C.Soc.Sci./
V.R.2.E, 30. See also Cowell, ‘Planning the Organisation of UNESCO, 1942–1946:
A Personal Record,’ 230, and Sewell, UNESCO and World Politics, 86.
(^278) Cowell, ‘Planning the Organisation of UNESCO, 1942–1946: A Personal Record,’
- The Preparatory Commission met in London from November 16, 1945 to September
15, 1946 and in Paris from September 16, 1946, to December 7, 1946.