2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 89to the horror of the days that you experience: we suffer with you all the
atrocities committed by your barbarous adversary, and the bombardment
of the Chinese population leaves us shuddering and revolted.’^7
The words of the Chinese delegate to the congress in Brussels would
be echoed in Geneva in 1937 by Li Yu-ying (Li Shizeng) in the course
of a meeting of the LON Assembly’s Sixth Committee. Subsequent
to the Eleventh Assembly of the LON in 1930, it was to this commit-
tee that questions concerning the LON’s work in the field of intellec-
tual cooperation were addressed.^8 Li, after having urged the institution
of a convention protecting historical monuments and cultural insti-
tutions in times of war, read out a telegram from the president of the
Chinese National Committee on Intellectual Cooperation namely, Wu
Zhihui (Wu Shi-Fee). In the telegram Wu, a member of the governing
body of the Intellectual Cooperation Organisation (ICO) of the LON
since 1930, that is, a member since 1930 of the ICIC, pointed to the
‘agonising, catastrophic destruction’ and ‘open massacres’ then being
perpetrated by Japanese forces in China. He reported that educational
institutions had been especially targeted and that centres of intellectual
activity had been subject to aerial attack. Wu concluded his message by
imploring the League to ‘employ all effective means to safeguard the civ-
ilisation [of] humanity.’ Having read out the telegram, Li pointed out
that the Chinese delegation in Geneva had received further documents
concerning the destruction of educational establishments, monuments,
museums and libraries, adding that the list of destroyed institutions and
monuments was very long. He then repeated a point which he had made
at the annual meeting of the ICIC in July that year: to ‘propagate the
(^7) A Chinese delegate to the World Peace Congress, 1936, quoted in Congrès de Paix
du People de France: Message of the Commission Feminine du Rassemblement Universel
pour la Paix aux Femmes Chinoises and Congrès de Paix du People de France: Message
of the Commission Feminine du Rassemblement Universel pour la Paix aux Femmes
Chinoises. The first page of the Message of the Commission Feminine du Rassemblement
Universel pour la Paix aux Femmes Chinoises is reproduced in Mazuy, ‘Le Rassemblement
Universal pour la Paix,’ 42. Mazuy notes that the RUP supported Chiang Kai-shek more
than the Communists in opposing the Japanese intervention in China.
(^8) Pham Thi-Tu, La coopération intellectuelle sous la Société des Nations (Paris: Librairie
Minard, 1962), 21n., 24. The Sixth Committee otherwise addressed political ques-
tions. Jean-Jacques Renoliet, L’UNESCO oubliée: La Société des Nations et la Coopération
Intellectuelle (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1999), 184. Wu Zhihui (Wu Shi-Fee) was
a member of the ICIC from 1930 to 1939.