Story of International Relations

3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 311

As its use of the expression economic and social questions would sug-
gest, the Bruce Report was further evidence of that change in the polit-
ico-economic outlook of which Loveday had spoken at Chatham House
in the previous year. Indeed, one the report’s intentions was to spur the
League’s technical agencies to much greater efforts in the socio-eco-
nomic and humanitarian fields. After having noted the increasing extent
to which social progress is ‘dependent of economic and human values,’
the report stated the following:

State policies are determined in increasing measure by such social and eco-

nomic aims as the prevention of unemployment, the prevention of wide fluc-

tuations in economic activity, the provision of better housing, the suppression

and cure of disease...Modern experience has also shown with increasing

clearness that none of these problems can be entirely solved by purely

national action. The need for the interchange of experience and the co-or-

dination of action between national authorities has been proved useful and

necessary time after time in every section of the economic and social fields.^247

It is also worth noting that the report did not treat social and economic
problems as merely technical problems: as capable of being solved, once
any confusion had been eliminated, by the application of the correct
techniques. Indeed, the report stated that it considered the distinction
customarily made between the ‘political’ and ‘technical’ work of the
League ‘unfortunate’ because what were called ‘“technical problems” are
in every country political questions, frequently the cause of internal con-
troversy and often necessitating international negotiation.’^248
On December 14, 1939, the Assembly met to consider the Bruce
Report. It also had before it a report by the secretary general concern-
ing decisions he had been compelled to make on the current and future

[Avenol’s deputy] Sean Lester to indicate on July 19 that he did not think that the Bruce
Committee would take action that might embarrass the United States....Americans serving
in League bodies and some U.S. officials had encouraged Secretariat members to believe
the U.S. might take a more active part if an autonomous organization existed. When the
chips were down the U.S. would not join thee Central Committee’ (ibid., 58, 63–64).

(^247) League of Nations, Special Committee on the Development of International
Cooperation in Economic and Social Affairs, The Development of International
Co-operation in Economic and Social Affairs: Report of the Special Committee (Geneva:
League of Nations, 1939), 6.
(^248) Ibid.