5 THE POST-WAR DECLINE OF THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CONFERENCE 445come to the fore.’^63 Considerations of this nature caused the Norwegian
group in their submission to the meeting Chatham House to call atten-
tion to the tendency of delegates at pre-war conferences to pose as the
representatives of particular policies or States.^64
On the afternoon of November 18, the meeting arrived at the view
that the topic chosen at Bergen was ‘too broad and vast’ and that, in
any case, it had been rendered redundant by the formation of the United
Nations. Thus, the meeting appointed an informal programme commit-
tee and charged it with formulating a new and ‘more precisely limited
and concrete’ subject of study. Davis, Toynbee and Christophersen were
among the members of this committee and it was assisted in its work
when it met the following day by Mayoux and Vranek.^65 Among the
topics proposed at programme committee’s meeting were the techno-
logical aspects of security including the problem of inspection and con-
trol; the relationship between regional organisation and world security;
the significance of the provisions of the United Nations Charter for non
self-governing territories; the question of whether the traditional concep-
tion of state sovereignty was compatible with the effective operation of
the security provisions of the charter; and what conception of life is rep-
resented by the term democracy as it is employed in different parts of the
world.^66
In the end, the programme committee decided in favour of a study of
a particular aspect of the United Nations Charter: a study of the func-
tions and problems of the United Nations Security Council, a subject
which, the committee insisted, was of ‘crucial importance’. In particular,
and in a clear divergence from a prominent feature of pre-war thought
and policy, the programme committee suggested that a study in this area
should focus on the problem of how to apply the charter’s strictures
(^63) International Studies Conference: Report on the Informal (14th) Meeting of the
Executive Committee and Members of the Conference, London, November 18, 1945, AG
1-IICI-K-I-2, UA.
(^64) Memorandum presented by the Norwegian Group to the Fourteenth Meeting of the
Executive Committee, London, November 18, 1945, AG 1-IICI-K-I-2, UA.
(^65) Report of the Informal Programme Committee held at the Royal Institute of
International Affairs, London, November 19, 1945, AG 1-IICI-K-I-2, UA.
(^66) Ibid. See also Politique Étrangère 10, no. 3 (1945), 299–300.