302 J.-A. PEMBERTON
commissioned by the GRC, was distributed to participants at the Bergen
conference.^218
Way suggests that it may well have in recognition of his efforts
at the LON that McDougall was appointed for a three year period in
January 1937 to the Economic Committee of the LON’s Economic and
Financial Organisation. Later that year, that committee would exam-
ine a memorandum McDougall completed in December 1936 called
‘Economic Appeasement’ in which he outlined the steps he thought
should be taken at a national and international level to improve stand-
ards of living with a view to reviving world trade and, in turn, easing
political tensions.^219 Notably, McDougall stated the following therein:
‘If the nations learn to turn to the League for information, help and
advice on economic and social questions, the prestige that has been lost
on the political plane may be regained on a firmer basis.’^220 Under the
heading of ‘Economic Appeasement,’ an editorial published in the Times
on September 22, 1937, opined that Bruce clearly had McDougall’s
‘instructive’ memorandum in mind the day before when giving what the
newspaper hailed as a ‘noteworthy’ speech and which it cited as ‘proof
that this year the League of Nations is wisely approaching its task of pro-
moting international appeasement from a new angle’: through promot-
ing economic cooperation among states, including both states which
were members of the LON and states which were not.^221
Bruce spoke at the assembly immediately after the Romanian foreign
minister Victor Antonescu had delivered a speech. The latter’s speech
is noteworthy in this context because in it Antonescu drew attention to
the movement within the LON to reform the covenant through elim-
inating its collective security provisions. Antonescu told the assem-
bly on September 21, 1937, that these were provisions to which the
Petite Entente, of which he was president in office, was devoted pre-
cisely because it was devoted to the principle that ‘every nation has an
(^218) F. L. McDougall, ‘Food and Welfare,’ Geneva Special Studies 9, no. 5 (Geneva:
Geneva Research Centre, 1938), and Marie Louise Berg, secretary of the Geneva
Research Centre, to Gross, February 14, 1939, AG 1ICI—K-I-16.b. See also Coopération
Intellectuelle, nos. 99–100 (1939): 786–87.
(^219) Way, A New Idea Each Day, 177. See also ‘Standard of Living: Ways to Economic
Appeasement,’ Times, September 18, 1937.
(^220) F. L. McDougall, 1936, quoted in Way, A New Idea Each Day, 199.
(^221) ‘Economic Appeasement,’ Times, September 22, 1937. See also Way, A New Idea
Each Day, 202.