1 PEACEFUL CHANGE OR WAR? 47In the end, the Spanish group received the necessary support from
the reconstituted Spanish cabinet and thus the Madrid conference went
ahead as planned, its meetings being held at the Palacio de Hielo, the
headquarters of the Federation of Spanish Associations for International
Studies, from Wednesday May 27 until Saturday May 30. At the inau-
gural meeting, Gascón y Marín and Augusto Barcía Trelles, the latter
having been appointed foreign minister on February 19, 1936, delivered
welcoming addresses in which they reminded their audience that they
were in the country of such moral geniuses as Francisco de Vittoria and
Francisco Suárez. In Barcia Trelles’s words, these noted figures in the
history of international law had ‘established a doctrine which affirmed
the existence of ecumenical norms...superior to the private interest of
each country,’ a doctrine which, Barcia Trelles pointed out, was embod-
ied in the constitution of the Spanish Republic.^148
In relation to the doctrine of Vittoria and Suárez and in view of
the ‘development of pacific means of solving international conflicts,’
Barcia Trelles observed, in the course of a discourse which the Gheorge
Vlădescu-Răcoasa (Georges Vladesco-Rocoassa), a professor of sociol-
ogy at the University of Bucharest, described as ‘captivating,’ that it was
very important that the study of international relations give expression
to the ‘thought and sentiment of democracy’.^149 Barcía Trelles words
were recorded by Vlădescu-Răcoasa in an article on the Madrid confer-
ence appearing in late November in Adevărul, a ‘grand quotidian du
soir’ of Bucharest, as Vlădescu-Răcoasa put it in a letter to Bonnet to
which the article and a French translation of it was attached. Doubtless
Vlădescu-Răcoasa saw great poignancy in them when penning his article
given that they were uttered, as the Romanian sociologist noted therein,
(^148) ‘Conférence Préliminaire sur le Règlement Pacifique des Problèmes Internationaux,’
Coopération Intellectuelle, nos. 66–67 (1936): 1–43, 3, 5.
(^149) Augusto Barcia Trelles 1936, quoted in G. Vlădescu-Răcoasa, ‘Conferința permanantă
de Inalte Studii Internationale: Insemnǎrl despre ultima sessiune,’ Adevărul, November
26, 1936. Georges Vladesco-Rocoassa (Gheorge Vlădescu-Răcoasa) to Henri Bonnet,
9 December 1936, Conférence permanente des hautes études internationales: Peaceful
Change, du 1er juin 1936 au 1er janvier 1937, AG 1-IICI-K-I-15.d, UA. The title and
name of the author of the article appeared in the French translation of Vlădescu-Răcoasa’s
article on the conference in Adevărul as follows: ‘“Conférence permanente des hautes
études internationales: Impressions de la dernière session” par G. Vladesco Rocoassa’
(ibid.).