3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 309the diplomatic energy required in order to create such a body.^241 On
February 2, 1939, the proposal for a new organisation was delivered a
coup de grâce in the form of a letter sent by Hull to the secretary gen-
eral in response to an invitation issued by the Nineteenth Assembly to
non-member states to state their views on the direction of and their pos-
sible collaboration with the LON’s activities in the economic and social
fields. In what was the only official response issued by a non-member
state to the assembly’s invitation, Hull declared that the LON ‘has been
responsible for the development of mutual exchange and discussion of
ideas and methods to a greater extent and in more fields of humanitarian
and scientific endeavour than any other organization in history.’^242
According to Walters, Hull went further than this: the latter noted
in his letter that there was considerably more work to be undertaken
in order to address the world’s various social and economic problems
and declared that the government of the United States wished to see
the LON’s capacity for dealing with such problems enhanced. Having
observed that the government he represented considered progress in
the social and economic fields as a key part of the realisation of a peace-
ful international order, Hull additionally declared that the government
of the United States intended to persist with its policy of collaborating
with the LON’s technical organisations and to consider ways in which its
involvement with them might be furthered.^243
In the period intervening between the floating of the proposal for
a new social and economic organisation and the airing of Hull’s letter
to the secretary general, Bruce had been busy with plans for reform-
ing the LON’s Economic and Financial Organisation. In May 1938, he
chaired the Committee for the Co-ordination of Economic and Financial
Questions which further developed proposals concerning the govern-
ance of the organisation that had been discussed in the context of a
committee he had chaired in the previous year.^244 In May 1939, against
the background of Hull’s communication to the secretary general and
at the urging of the secretary general, the LON Council invited Bruce
to chair the Special Committee on the Development of International
(^241) Ibid.
(^242) Cordell Hull, 1939, quoted ibid.
(^243) Walters, A History of the League of Nations, 761.
(^244) Way, A New Idea Each Day, 204.