310 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Co-operation in Economic and Social Affairs, a committee informally
known as the Bruce Committee. Evidencing the importance attached
to this committee is the fact that among its six members were Rist and
Bourquin, the former being renowned for his economic expertise and
the latter for his diplomatic and legal skills.^245
On August 22, 1939 this committee issued ‘The Development of
International Co-operation in Economic and Social Affairs: Report of
the Special Committee’: what was generally known as the Bruce Report.
This report proposed the creation of Central Committee for Economic
and Social Questions which would be charged with overseeing and coor-
dinating the various economic and social activities of the League. The
idea was that at the outset, this committee would consist of the repre-
sentatives of twenty-four members states as selected by the assembly and
would be given the discretion to include among its number up to eight
experts in relevant fields. At a later stage, the committee would have the
right to choose its own members and ‘include non-Member States on
terms to be negotiated with them.’^246
(^245) Walters, A History of the League of Nations, 761. Walters described Rist as France’s
‘foremost economist’ and Bourquin as ‘a Belgian delegate of noted ability.’ In addition
to Bruce, Bourquin and Rist, the committee included Harold Butler, ‘who had recently
handed over to John Winant the headship of the International Labour Office; [Carl J.]
Hambro, President of the Norwegian Parliament [and chair of the Christian Michelsen
Institute of Science and Intellectual Liberty];...[and] Francisco Tudela of Peru, a former
Minister of Foreign Affairs, whose moderation and public spirit had won all hearts in
Geneva’ (ibid.). See also Way, A New Idea Each Day, 202, 204, and Martin D. Dubin,
‘Toward the Bruce Report: The Economic and Social Programs of the League of Nations
in the Avenol Years,’ in The League of Nations in Retrospect: Proceedings of the Symposium
Organised by the United Nations Library and the Graduate Institute of International
Studies, Geneva, 6–9 November, 1980 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1983), 57. Martin D.
Dubin points out that Kyriakos Varvaressos, the former Greek minister for finance and
deputy-governor of the Bank of Greece was also a member of the Bruce Committee.
Dubin notes that Avenol ‘properly is regarded as the father of the Bruce Report’ because
of his sponsorship of it and that it was ‘the long-deferred product of discussions initiated
by senior officials of the League of Nations Secretariat desiring to improve the organisa-
tion’s role in economic diplomacy after the failure of the London Monetary and Economic
Conference in July 1933’ (ibid., 63).
(^246) Dubin, ‘Toward the Bruce Report: The Economic and Social Programs of the League
of Nations in the Avenol Years,’ 59. Dubin notes that in late July, 1939, Avenol ‘received a
cautionary warning Royall Tyler, an American Secretariat member, warning that any desire
to recruit the United States [to the proposed new agency] had better remain hidden....A
similar message had come earlier from Sweetser. Perhaps it was this sensitivity that motived