5 THE POST-WAR DECLINE OF THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CONFERENCE 495power-political interpretation of international relations which was gain-
ing ground at the time of the ISC’s demise.
In many ways, what some of those associated with ISC sought to
do was to theoretically entrench the League and its evolving activi-
ties.^225 This point holds not only in relation to the League’s activities
in the political, legal and economic spheres, but also, given the socio-
logical orientation of the ISC, in relation to the League’s work in gen-
eral: protection of minorities; the governance of mandated territories;
traffic in women and children; refugees; demographic questions; opium
and dangerous drugs; health and hygiene; nutrition and standards of liv-
ing; transit and communication and, of course, intellectual cooperation.
Yet, despite the broader social purposes that lay behind its efforts, the
ISC was also keen to affirm its scientific character. Under the direction
of Condliffe such affirmations were translated into a precise formula: a
report of the ISC’s work submitted to the Twenty First Plenary Session
of the ICIC in 1939, the last session of its kind, stated that it proceeded
‘by the study of reality, by the verification of facts and of their underlying
significance.’^226
That said, the ISC’s frequent and solemn affirmations of its scientific
attitude throughout most of its life are probably best seen as reflections of
a felt-need to assert the intellectual respectability of what was being under-
taken in the conference’s name. In this regard, it can be contrasted with
the IPR, which, under the influence of Condliffe, sought from the out-
set to develop a ‘scientific method in international relations,’ through inte-
grating the ‘methods of the natural sciences’ in regard to research with the
‘psychological processes of discussion.’^227
The affirmations of the ISC’s scientific character are also telling of the
ISC’s connection with Intellectual Cooperation at the LON: the vaunted
apolitical status of the LON’s intellectual cooperation organisation
(^225) Kolasa, International Intellectual Cooperation, 109.
(^226) International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, Report of the Twenty First
Plenary Session, 1939, quoted in Kolasa, International Intellectual Cooperation, 109.
(^227) ‘Appendix 6: Handbook of the Institute of Pacific Relations,’ in Bruno Lasker and
William L. Holland, eds., Problems of the Pacific 1931: Proceedings of the Fourth Conference
of the Institute of Pacific Relations, Hangchow and Shanghai, China, October 21 to November
2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932), 530–32. This handbook was prepared by
Condliffe.