5 THE POST-WAR DECLINE OF THE INTERNATIONAL STUDIES CONFERENCE 497(^229) International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, Report of Its Twenty-First
Plenary Session, 1939, quoted in Kolasa, International Intellectual Cooperation, 109.
understood within the context of the ISC by the time its study meet-
ing in Paris in 1937 reached its dispirited conclusion. Yet even while the
international system was collapsing around it, the ISC persisted in its
efforts to throw light on international problems and find ways of organ-
ising international peace. At its study meetings in Prague and Bergen in
1938 and 1939 respectively, the ISC discussed why it was imperative to
create mechanisms that would ensure that the masses enjoyed a better
and more gracious way of living in the future, thereby anticipating a par-
amount feature of the discussions concerning post-war reconstruction
that were soon to burst forth. True to its origins within the framework of
Intellectual Cooperation and reflecting an awareness that at some point
all must begin again, the ISC’s report on its work to the ICIC’s twenty-
first plenary session in 1939 concluded with the following crisp pro-
nouncement: ‘in view of the complexity of modern life, the need to place
the power of thought at the service of world relations, its capacity for
discovery and foresight is daily more clearly evident.’^229