314 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Although the war in Europe meant that the Bruce reforms would
not be implemented, it did not bring to an end the economic and
social work of the LON. In February 1940 at The Hague, the organis-
ing committee that the assembly had established on December 14 met.
At this meeting, the secretariat discussed with certain of the commit-
tee’s members the outline of a plan of studies on post-war problems to
be undertaken by the staff of Department II: Economic, Financial and
Transit Department.^257 This new department resulted from the reunifi-
cation of the secretariat’s Financial and Economic Sections, which had
been separated following Salter’s departure from the role of director of
the Economic and Financial Section in 1931, and the amalgamation of
these reunified sections with the Communications and Transit Section.
The Economic, Financial and Transit Department, which was under
the direction of Loveday, was established against the background of
‘the onset of war, increasing member state defection, and a considera-
ble reduction in the League’s budget and staff.’^258 Although the plan
of studies on post-war problems was revised and amplified over the
next eighteen months, its execution, which continued down to 1946,
remained guided by the following principle:
Provided that political relations can be settled on a basis which assures
the maintenance of peace, the core of the social and economic issues of
the future is likely to be the problem of economic advancement and social
security. The means by which this goal can be reached must therefore con-
stitute the central thread of all constructive economic thinking for the
future.^259(^257) League of Nations: Economic and Financial Committees, Report to the Council on the
Work of the Joint Session London, April 27th–May 1st, 1942, Princeton, August 7th–8th, 1942,
12.
(^258) Patricia Clavin and Jens-Wilhelm Wessels, ‘Transnationalism and the League
of Nations: Understanding the Work of Its Economic and Financial Organisation,’
Contemporary European History 14, no. 4 (2005): 465–92, 475, 475n-76n.
(^259) League of Nations, Report of the Work of the League 1941–1942, 1942, quoted in
League of Nations: Economic and Financial Committees, Report to the Council on the Work
of the Joint Session London, April 27th–May 1st, 1942. Princeton, August 7th–8th, 1942, 14.