5 THE POST-WAR DECLINE OF THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CONFERENCE 439of East and West (1935). It should be noted that East and West was the
fourth volume in the International Series of Open Letters.^40 Although
confessing that there was much to admire in European civilisation,
Tagore nonetheless affirmed in his letter to Murray that the unfortunate
fact was that the ‘one outstanding visible relationship of Europe with
Asia today is that of exploitation.’ He further affirmed that the Asian
spirit sickened in the face of the extent of Europe’s material power and
its endless appetite for power.^41 There are ‘no people in the whole of
Asia today,’ Tagore declared, ‘which does not look upon Europe with
fear and suspicion’ and it was in order to ‘retain her self-respect,’ he
added, that all of Asia now denied the ‘moral superiority’ of Europe.^42
Referring to Western countries, Murray stated in the letter he addressed
to Tagore in response to the latter’s letter the following: that ‘our own
national habits are not the unfailing canon by which those of other peo-
ples must be judged’.^43
In the aftermath of the Second World War, concessions of this nature
received more frequent and more emphatic expression, not least because
the chorus of denials regarding the moral superiority of Europe was
growing much louder and was becoming more widespread. As Lucien
Febvre declared during a discussion of a possible inquiry into the world’s
civilisations in the context of UNESCO’s Sub-Commission on Social
Sciences, Philosophy and Humanistic Studies on November 28, 1946,
‘[i]t is not as if...[western civilisation]...were the prototype—a marvel-
lous thing to which all the world should approximate. Not all the world
to-day will accept that suggestion. The idea encounters a good deal of
resistance.’^44
(^40) Gilbert Murray and Rabindranath Tagore, League of Nations, East and West, An
International Series of Open Letters 4 (Paris: League of Nations, International Institute
of Intellectual Cooperation, 1935). See also L’avenir de l’esprit européen Europe, Amérique
latine, Entretiens 7 (Paris: Société des Nations, Institut International de la Coopération
Intellectuelle, 1937).
(^41) Murray et al., East and West, 43–4.
(^42) Ibid., 44, 46.
(^43) Ibid., 15–6.
(^44) 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.1.E, 19, UA.