54 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Romanian representative of the International Labour Organisation
(ILO) and the former secretary and now director and international rep-
resentative of the Romanian Social Institute (Institutul Social Român).
The Romanian Social Institute had been founded in Bucharest in 1921
by the sociologist Dimitrie Gusti and was a ‘private scientific institu-
tion’ which had as its object the study of political, economic and social
problems of both a national and international dimension.^170 Vlădescu-
Răcoasa noted that the discussion in which Berber intervened in
regard to the programme of the 1937 conference was presided over
by the Canadian-born James T. Shotwell, a professor of history at the
University of Columbia and director of the economic, political and his-
torical division of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who
at the Paris Peace Conference had assisted the American Commission to
Negotiate Peace in the creation of the ILO.^171 Vlădescu-Răcoasa fur-
ther noted that upon Berber’s intervention, the discussion ‘became lively
and passionate’. He added that the German delegate did not hesitate
to inject into the discussion ‘political accents’ that were ‘rather strong’
and of ‘prophetic allure.’ As Vlădescu-Răcoasa pointed out, as a result
of Berber’s efforts, the concluding part of the discussion, in the course
of which Berber’s demand was leant support by Malcolm W. Davis,
assistant director of the European Centre of the Division of Intercourse
and Education of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and
former director of the Geneva Research Centre and of the Council on
Foreign Relations in New York, saw the inscription of ‘les problems eth-
niques’ and national in the order of the day of the 1937 conference.^172
(^170) D. Gusti and G. Vladesco Rocoassa [Gheorge Vlădescu-Răcoasa] to the director of
the IICI (Henri Bonnet), 21 October 1930, Centres de documentation internationale ne
dépendant pas de partis politiques (préparation), jusqu’au 31 décembre 1930, AG 1-IICI-
K-II-2.a, UA.
(^171) ‘Conférence permanente des hautes études internationales: Impressions de la dernière
session’ par G. Vladesco Rocoassa, AG 1-IICI-I-15.d, UA. For James T. Shotwell’s role in
relation to the creation of the ILO see Charles DeBenedetti, ‘James T. Shotwell and the
Science of International Relations,’ Political Science Quarterly 89, no. 2 (1974): 379–95,
385.
(^172) ‘Conférence permanente des hautes études internationales: Impressions de la dern-
ière session’ par G. Vladesco Rocoassa, AG 1-IICI-I-15.d, UA. For Malcom W. Davis’s
intervention in support of Berber’s demand regard the agenda of the 1937 conference, see
Coopération Intellectuelle, nos. 66–67 (1936), 30. Davis stated that the American National
Committee would ‘undertake a study of certain ethnic questions raised by M. Berber’. See