351tHe Activities of tHe iiic: december 1939–mAy 1940
In April 1939, the IIIC’s administrative council decided that in the
event of war, it would try as far as possible to continue to maintain lines
of communication among and support for all those dedicated to the
defence of culture.^1 Accordingly, at the end of the year and in the wake of
the brief meeting of the LON Assembly and Council on December 14, the
IIIC sent communications to the delegates of states accredited to the IIIC
of which there were forty in all, the national committees of intellectual
cooperation and the groups of professors, writers, savants and intellectuals
which had collaborated in its work, declaring that the IIIC would continue
to ‘function in its seat.’^2
In informing its constituencies of its intention, the IIIC posed two
questions: what should be the ‘conditions under which it should con-
tinue its work’ and how could it ‘openly take a stand against aggression.’
Hundreds of responses flooded in from nearly every free country, both
belligerent and neutral. According to Bonnet, the respondents were
united in insisting that the IIIC must carry on in its work and that the
ICO should not ‘continue by taking an attitude of indifference in the face
CHAPTER 4Intellectual Cooperation in War-Time
and Plans for Reconstruction
© The Author(s) 2020
J.-A. Pemberton, The Story of International Relations,
Part Three, Palgrave Studies in International Relations,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31827-7_4
(^1) Informations sur la Coopération Intellectuelle (a), nos. 1–2 (1939), 1.
(^2) Ibid., 1, and Henri Bonnet, Intellectual Co-operation in World Organization (Washington,
DC: American Council on Public Affairs, 1942), 22.