Story of International Relations

3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 301

before the final report was drafted.^214 Loveday observed that it might
strike people as curious that the Economic and Financial Organisation
was undertaking work of this kind, adding that he had thought it so
when it had fallen to him to undertake it some eighteen months ear-
lier.^215 However, he then stated the following:

But the fact that it is being handled largely by...[the Economic and

Financial Organisation]..reflects, I think, a change in politico-economic

outlook of the utmost importance. We have been in the habit of looking

on economics as the art or science of production, as being concerned with

the amount of the national income or with man as a producer. To-day we

are beginning to think of man as a consumer and of the economics of con-

sumption. We are beginning to ask ourselves not simply how much is pro-

duced, but what is consumed and by whom. We are beginning to believe

that, even though politics set limits to economic negotiations, many of

our political worries may be solved not by talking politics but by satisfying

wants, the wants of the individual consumer.^216

As Loveday suggested during his address at Chatham House, the fact
that the Economic and Financial Organisation extended its field of vision
to include such issues as domestic standards of living, the economics of
consumption and nutrition, must be viewed against the backdrop which
was the growing conviction that economic policy must be much more
oriented to social needs: there was a growing conviction that solving the
problems of war and political turmoil demanded the satisfaction of wants
within national communities no less than improvements in international
commercial relations.^217 It is telling of the growth of this conviction that
a study by McDougall called Food and Welfare (1938), which had been

(^214) Ibid., 796.
(^215) Ibid., 795–97.
(^216) Ibid., 796.
(^217) ‘During the past few years, the Economic and Financial Organisation of the League
has tended to concern itself less exclusively with problems of international commercial rela-
tions in the strict sense and to devote increased attention to the study of national eco-
nomic problems common to a large number of countries.’ League of Nations, Economic
and Financial Questions: Report submitted by the Second Committee to the Assembly,
September 26, 1938, 4–6, 10A/35282/1778 A.64.1938.IIB, League of Nations Archives,
Geneva.