448 J.-A. PEMBERTON
French government, placed at the disposition at the LON.^76 In particu-
lar, the assembly recalled that this accord had stipulated that ‘in case
of the suppression of the Institute’ its property, with the exception of
the premises and furniture placed at its disposal by the French govern-
ment, would be transferred to the LON and in view of this resolved to
transfer the IIIC’s right of property to the United Nations.^77 Fittingly,
the Twenty First Assembly was closed by one of the League’s founders,
namely, Cecil who declared the following: ‘The League is dead, long
live the United Nations!’^78 On April 19, an accord was signed by Séan
Lester, a former Irish diplomat who, after having served since 1937
deputy secretary general succeeded Avenol in the role of secretary gen-
eral after the latter quit Geneva, and Walter Moderow, who represented
the United Nations, transferring the assets of the League to the United
Nations, among these being the property of the IIIC, ‘notably...[its]...
archives and collections of documents’.^79
To the delight of Mayoux, the assembly had also voted the IIIC a sum
of 300,000 Swiss francs in order that it could undertake its liquidation,
a sum which he hoped would be greatly augmented by the French gov-
ernment. In this he would be disappointed. Although the French gov-
ernment allocated to the IIIC an amount of 5,357,000 francs* for the
period between April 1946 and 1947, it was not enough for the insti-
tute to continue to fully function throughout the year.^80 As Mayoux later
explained in a letter to Davis, a ‘decision of the French Government’ had
rendered it ‘imperative to close down the work of the sections’ of the
IIIC on September 30, the date on which twenty out of at total of thirty-
nine functionaries would depart. There was one exception to this: the
Section of Political and Social Sciences would remain open. In light of
(^76) Hsu Fu Teh, L’activité de la Sociétié des Nations dans le domaine intellectuel (Paris:
Marcel Rivière, 1929), 64–5, 67. The Polish Government offered the IIIC at the outset
100,000 French francs in order to undertake a study of assistance to universities.
(^77) Ibid., 10, 18.
(^78) The United Nations Library at Geneva and the League of Nations Archives, ‘The End
of the League of Nations: The Last Assembly,’ 153.
(^79) Coopération Intellectuelle Internationale, nos. 3–4 (1946), 18, and The United
Nations Library at Geneva and the League of Nations Archives, ‘The End of the League of
Nations: The Last Assembly,’ 153.
(^80) Renoliet, L’UNESCO oubliée, 177.