420 J.-A. PEMBERTON
he regarded as the ‘most light, the most decorative, the least useful’ of all
the ICO’s work.^290
Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether or not this is
a fair characterisation of the various intellectual and cultural exchanges
sponsored by the Permanent Committee of Letters and Arts, it is impor-
tant to also note that many of the projects undertaken by UNESCO in
its early years were in fact continuous with or simply an amplification
of projects that had earlier been launched by the considerably less well-
funded ICO. As Pham-Thi-Tu observed in his 1962 study of both the
ICO and UNESCO, the reform of school text-books, the conservation
of museums, the coordination of libraries, the translation of classic works
and the promotion of the creative arts were all inscribed in the pro-
grammes of both institutions.^291
Mass communications was a key heading under which UNESCO’s
work was grouped and was an aspect of UNESCO’s programme that
was represented by Huxley as sharply distinguishing the work of the new
organisation from the old. Huxley stated that
if UNESCO were to exert a more powerful and more extended influence
than its forerunner...and become an organisation of peoples instead of one
only of governments and intellectuals, it must also concern itself with the
methods which alone can ensure the wholesale spread of information and
culture and exert a mass influence on opinion—modern printing, wireless
and cinema; and the whole field of mass communications.^292Yet even in regard to the matter of mass communications, the differ-
ence in the nature of the work undertaken by the two institutions can
be overstated: from the late 1920s, the ICO studied the role that pop-
ular media (in the form of radio, cinema and the press) might play in
(^290) Mayoux, ‘La Coopération Intellectuelle Internationale: UNESCO,’ vi.
(^291) Pham, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations, 2. The legacy of the
ICO was not entirely unacknowledged. For example, its considerable work in the area of
the reform of teaching materials was detailed in a UNESCO report on the same topic.
See Chapter II, ‘The Work of the League of Nations and the International Institute of
Intellectual Co-operation,’ in A Handbook for the Improvement of Textbooks and Teaching
Materials as Aids to International Understanding (Paris: UNESCO, 1949).
(^292) Report of the Director-General for 1947, quoted in David Hardman, introduction to
UNESCO, General Conference, Reflections on Our Age: Lectures Delivered at the Opening
Session of UNESCO at the Sorbonne University, Paris (London: Allan Wingate, 1948), 11–2.