5 THE POST-WAR DECLINE OF THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CONFERENCE 437tradition of Anglo-American empiricism.’^32 It worth noting here that a
good number of observers of international affairs in the interwar period
had explained the different attitudes of the French, on the one hand, and
the Anglo-Saxons, on the other, to collective security in terms of these
somewhat contrasting intellectual traditions: the French insistence on
automatic guarantees of security according to some, was informed by a
turn of mind which insisted on system and rigour whereas the Anglo-
Saxon aversion to such guarantees, was often said to be informed by
a turn of mind which was piece-meal and pragmatic. In regard to the
Anglo-American tradition, Mayoux stated that it follows very closely ‘the
present reality’ and attaches itself ‘with an extreme vigilance, a sensitiv-
ity very exact, to what is essential and vital’: it seeks to ‘resolve prob-
lems as they present themselves’ and to ‘transform and improve what
is.’ This approach, it should noted, is more or less consistent with the
approach that Mayoux associated with the term idéal: idealism signi-
fied for Mayoux a ‘perfectioning perfectly possible’ and not a ‘pursuit of
impossible perfection’.^33
Mayoux explained that the Cartesian tradition insisted on ‘the proper
ordering of the steps of thought’ and consists in a ‘method, solid, vigor-
ous...[and]... regular, yet still réaliste.’ It is a tradition which, he added,
borrows from Descartes ‘above all perhaps, the principle of the gradation
of difficulties’ and that in this respect it too ‘holds account of things as
they are, of the problems as...they present themselves.’^34
Mayoux stated that the Cartesian tradition as with the Anglo-
American empirical tradition, ‘would obey [reality] in order to
command.’ He then posed the following question: ‘is it not in fact indis-
pensable to bring together method,’ by which he meant the Cartesian
method alone, and empiricism?^35 If experience is to be commanded at
all, Mayoux declared, then method must hold account of things as they
are and equally, empiricism must submit to method. Mayoux trans-
lated this unification of method and empiricism into a plan for United
Nations’ action in the cultural field, advocating the creation of an organ-
isation charged with the ‘rigorous and quotidian’ task of ensuring that
(^32) Ibid., iii.
(^33) Ibid., i, iii.
(^34) Ibid., iii.
(^35) Ibid., iii.