Story of International Relations

308 J.-A. PEMBERTON

For all these reasons some leading figures in the various institutions of the

League, with Bruce at their head, began to plan for a change in the sys-

tem hitherto followed. Their purpose was to get rid of Council control;

to introduce in its place a new directing organ which should be technically

competent and capable of enhancing the authority of the various agencies;

to ensure greater publicity; and to give to the United States, and other

non-Member States which genuinely desired to collaborate, a proper share

of responsibility and power in the management of the work.^238

In July 1937, an even more radical proposal in regard to achieving col-
laboration between member and non-member states in the economic
and social fields was put forward by the Belgian government in the
shape of King Leopold and Prime Minister Van Zeeland: they proposed
the creation of a new economic and social organisation that would be
entirely separate from LON. In proposing this, according to Walters,
their aim was to facilitate cooperation between Germany, which had
refused to collaborate in LON undertakings since 1933, and a dis-
affected Italy on the one hand, and the democratic countries on the
other.^239 According to Walters, this proposal caught the attention of
those members of LON who were coming to feel that what had once
been regarded as a source of strength for the LON, namely, the cove-
nant’s collective security clauses, were

an embarrassment and a danger....Why allow the search for economic

appeasement, for the restoration of trade and the promotion of health to

be handicapped by being chained to an institution which the Axis hated,

to which the United States did not belong, and in which many of its own

Members no longer believed?^240

Some, however, were sceptical of the Belgian proposal. For one thing,
it was highly doubtful that Germany and Italy would participate in
a new organisation on any other basis than their own unacceptable
terms. It was also open to question as to whether plans to establish a
new international organisation were at all feasible: amidst conditions of
grave uncertainty it was unlikely that states would be willing to expend

(^238) Ibid., 759.
(^239) Ibid., 759–60.
(^240) Ibid., 760.