4 INTELLECTUAL COOPERATION IN WAR-TIME AND PLANS ... 417United States and take up a visiting professorship at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut.^279
Leaving aside the administrative problem posed by his illness, one can-
not help but observe that Zimmern’s conception of UNESCO seemed
rather out of line with that entertained by other key actors involved in its
founding. Before he fell ill, Zimmern drafted a report in which he elabo-
rated on his vision for UNESCO and this was presented on his behalf at
a meeting of the Preparatory Commission on February 1. In this report,
Zimmern insisted on the need to place the discussion of UNESCO and
its role on a ‘higher plane’: he urged that at least in the first instance,
rather than focus on specific plans of action, UNESCO should seek to
ground itself in an intellectual and a moral sense. Zimmern stated that if
UNESCO were to be ‘launched upon a course of creative evolution, it
must be endowed with the élan vital which Bergson revealed to us.’^280
Cowell claimed that Zimmern’s conception of UNESCO was sim-
ply that of an effective and better funded IIIC ‘but not much more’.^281
Zimmern certainly invoked the work of the ICO throughout his report.
However, it should be noted that he suggested therein that to the extent
that the ICO was found wanting, this was because it did not sufficiently
debate the ‘high themes’ that some had wanted it to debate and had
focussed instead on developing the ‘tools of intellectual and artistic life.’^282
(^279) Markwell, ‘Sir Alfred Zimmern Revisited,’ 282. D. J. Markwell observes that
Zimmern was a strong supporter of America’s international mission after World War II and
adds that in the United States Zimmern promoted the cause of UNESCO. On Zimmern’s
enthusiasm for the American mission, see also Rich, ‘Reinventing Peace,’ 125.
(^280) United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, ‘Preparatory
Commission, Report on the Framework of the Organisation,’ February 1946, UNESCO/
Prep.Com./16, 1–2, ‘Preparatory Commission, London–Paris, 1945–1946, vol. 2, Records
of Plenary Meetings’, UA.
(^281) Cowell states that Zimmern viewed UNESCO as a more effective and better endowed
IIIC ‘but not much more’. Cowell, ‘Planning the Organisation of UNESCO 1942–1946:
A Personal Record,’ 229. For the plan that UNESCO be a more representative organisa-
tion that its predecessor, see 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,’ 24.
(^282) Ibid., 6.