3 CONFERENCES AT PRAGUE AND BERGEN AND THE LOOMING WAR 313discussions concerning the reform of the LON it had been proposed that
the authority of the LON’s technical agencies should be enhanced. This
proposal had been issued with the with a view to making the LON more
effective in the economic and social fields. As we also saw, some hoped
that through making the LON more effective in these fields, its pres-
tige might be restored. However, by December 1939, it was no longer a
question of how the technical agencies of the LON might be better uti-
lised so as to restore the prestige of this politically damaged institution:
as Martin D. Dubin observes, in December 1939 the LON’s technical
agencies now ‘furnished the League with a means of survival as Europe
was headed into a general war.’^253
As Churchill told the House of Commons on January 17, 1940,
in light of its adoption of the Bruce Report, the assembly approved on
December 14 the appointment of an organising committee consisting of
the representatives of ten countries ‘to form the nucleus and to determine
the composition of the Central Committee’ that that report had pro-
posed.^254 Dubin points out that following Hitler’s invasion of Denmark
and Norway on April 9, ‘a meeting of the Central Committee sched-
uled for mid-June was abandoned.’^255 He further points out that the
‘extension of Germany’s offensive into Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg,
and France finally ended prospects of implementing the Bruce reforms,’
although it is worth noting here that the proposed central committee for
social and economic questions did in fact later take shape, albeit in the
form of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.^256
(^253) Dubin, ‘Toward the Bruce Report: The Economic and Social Programs of the League
of Nations in the Avenol Years,’ 59. Dubin makes the important point that the Bruce
Report was ‘not an instrument for appeasement. It contained a proposal for a Central
Committee for Economic and Social Questions which would have been dominated by the
British and French, as was the League’s Assembly which was to retain control over the
Central Committee’s budget. Moreover, a prime purpose of this new agency was to pro-
mote the very kind of open international system the Germans and Italians had rejected.
Even “economic appeasement” as proposed by Bruce had as its purpose expanding interna-
tional trade and inducing Hitler and Mussolini to abandon autarchic policies. Finally, nei-
ther Loveday nor Avenol, thought that the aggressors would cooperate’ (ibid., 63).
(^254) 356 Parl. Deb., H. C. (5th series), January 17, 1940, 104.
(^255) Dubin, ‘Toward the Bruce Report: The Economic and Social Programs of the League
of Nations in the Avenol Years,’ 63.
(^256) Ibid. Walters points out that the Central Committee for Economic and Social
Questions, ‘still-born, as it seemed, in 1939, came to life as the Economic and Social
Council of the United Nations.’ Walters, A History of the League of Nations, 762.