446 J.-A. PEMBERTON
‘so as to avoid the risk of war’ between the council’s permanent mem-
bers ‘without trying to purchase peace at the price of injustice to weaker
States.’^67
PrePArAtions for liQuidAtion
The lack of enthusiasm of the French government for the IIIC in its
final year of existence saddened Mayoux who had hoped that the insti-
tute would depart the world of intellectual cooperation with a flour-
ish. One can thus understand his lament: ‘we are nobody’s baby.’^68 The
IIIC’s orphan status was formally underlined at the last LON Assembly
in Geneva on April 8, 1946. Delegates of forty-three member states
attended this assembly where they voted voting unanimously that as of
April 20, the League would cease to exist. In view of this, the assembly
also had to take a ‘final and official disposition’ in regard to the transfer
of the LON’s assets to the United Nations.^69
It was in regard to this matter, that the assembly’s First Committee
under the chairmanship of Bourquin, met on April 17 in order exam-
ine among other questions pertaining to the dissolution of the LON, the
question of the disposition of the property of the IIIC.^70 In the course
of this meeting, homage was paid to the great service rendered by the
IIIC and its many happy initiatives were enumerated and commemo-
rated. Indeed, at the same meeting, Noel-Baker offered an apology on
behalf of the British Commonwealth for the disdain sometimes shown by
its members for the work of Intellectual Cooperation.^71
Noel-Baker recalled that Lord Arthur Balfour had observed in a
speech at the assembly in 1922 that the six delegations of the British
Commonwealth ‘never voted together at the Assembly except to oppose
(^67) 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.
(^68) Jean-Jacques Mayoux, 1946, quoted in Renoliet. L’UNESCO oubliée, 177.
(^69) The United Nations Library at Geneva and the League of Nations Archives, ‘The End
of the League of Nations: The Last Assembly,’ in the United Nations Library at Geneva
and the League of Nations Archives, The League of Nations 1920–1946, Organization and
Accomplishments: A Retrospective of the First Organization for the Establishment of World
Peace (Geneva: United Nations, 1996), 153.
(^70) ‘L’I.I.C.I. devant la XXIe Assemblée de la Société des Nations,’ Coopération
Intellectuelle Internationale, nos. 3–4 (1946): 9–18, 9.
(^71) Ibid., 16.