450 J.-A. PEMBERTON
stated this, the memorandum recorded, Holland reported that Carter,
at a meeting of the American consulting group on the ISC on April 18
and in his capacity as executive vice-president of the American Council
of IPR, had ‘expressed...very strongly his personal view that the...
[ISC]... should be totally independent of any governmental agency
and therefore also from UNESCO.’ However, according to Vranek’s
memorandum, in the course of his visit to the IIIC, Holland stated that
Carter’s position was not shared by the rest of the American group. To
the contrary, Vranek’s memorandum noted, Holland wanted to make it
clear that in regard to the ISC’s future relationship with UNESCO, it
was the view of the American consulting group and the ‘official point
of view’ of the IPR, that the ISC ‘should be in some clearly defined
relationship’ with UNESCO and that its secretariat should be pro-
vided by UNESCO. At the same time, Holland made it clear that the
view of those whom he represented was that the ISC ‘must retain its
entire independence in regard to its choice of study subjects, the
scope of its scientific research and the quality, type and volume of its
publications.’^84
Holland observed that recent decisions of the IPR, such as its request
that national councils of the IPR replace ‘such of their representatives
who hold a senior government office by others who have no direct con-
nection with their own governments,’ meant that the IPR was on its way
to becoming a ‘really expert scientific body totally divorced from policy
making agencies.’ In an echo of the view of the ISC’s 1935–1937 study
cycle that Condliffe had communicated to Davis in the aftermath of the
ISC’s 1937 session in Paris, Holland stated during his visit to the IIIC in
June 1946, that although the IPR considered that the ISC’s technique
of ‘biennial study cycles on subjects of world importance’ was ‘novel and
worthwhile’ and therefore should not be ‘abandoned,’ it also considered
that the ISC’s technique should be refined and made ‘much more pre-
cise both on the purely administrative side and on the side of scientific
planning, research and execution.’ Reiterating a common criticism of the
ISC’s conferences, Holland advised Vranek that the ISC ‘must rule out
as far as possible public meetings, public speeches and great gatherings
attended by important, but not necessarily well-informed, personalities’
(^84) Jiri F. Vranek, Memorandum for the Director on the visit of Dr. William L. Holland
at the International Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, June 7, 1946, AG 1-IICI-K-
V-2.d, UA.