3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 299In addition, the committee made, according to Alexander Loveday,
director of the Financial Section and its attached Economic Intelligence
Service, the ‘very sensible decision’ that before it drew up any kind of
report, it would urge governments to establish national nutrition com-
mittees. As a result of this decision, Loveday stated, the nutrition move-
ment, which although very strong in Great Britain and one or two other
places at the time was weak everywhere else, gained visibility in wider
and wider areas: scientists and social workers who had been ‘struggling
- generally rather obscurely’ with the problem of nutrition now had the
‘ear of governments’ and this ‘focussed attention on the problem.’^207
The interim report of the Mixed Committee was published on
June 24 and comprised four volumes: the first volume was the interim
report proper; the second volume was the aforementioned Technical
Commission’s report as revised and amplified at the Mixed Committee
meeting of June 4–7; the third volume was a report entitled Nutrition
in Various Countries which was a summary of information provided by
the countries concerned in light of a request by the secretary-general in
November 1935 and relevant information from other sources; and the
fourth volume was a report compiled by the IIA called Statistics of Food
Production, Consumption and Prices which had been presented to the
Mixed Committee in June.^208 The publication of the interim report gave
further impetus to the efforts of existing national organisations devoted
to nutrition and to efforts to establish such organisations. In light of this
and on the prompting of the Seventeenth Assembly, a meeting of rep-
resentatives of a number of national nutrition committees was held in
Geneva from February 22 to 26, 1937, under the chairmanship of Astor
with a view to exchanges of information.^209
On August 14, 1937 the Mixed Committee’s final report was pub-
lished. Entitled The Relation of Nutrition to Health, Agriculture and
Economic Policy, its primary focus was on the economic and agricultural
(^207) Loveday, ‘The Economic and Financial Activities of the League,’ 796.
(^208) League of Nations, Nutrition: Final Report of the Mixed Committee of the League of
Nations on the Relation of Nutrition to Health, Agriculture and Economic Policy, 12, 14,
and League of Nations, Interim Report of the Mixed Committee on the Problem of Nutrition,
- See also League of Nations, Report on the Physiological Bases of Nutrition, i. The interim
report noted that as of June 24, the fourth volume of the report was still in preparation.
(^209) League of Nations, Nutrition: Final Report of the Mixed Committee of the League of
Nations on the Relation of Nutrition to Health, Agriculture and Economic Policy, 15.