374 J.-A. PEMBERTON
conference’s proceedings entitled War and Peace in the Pacific, that the
international conditions surrounding the conference rendered it very dif-
ferent from all previous conferences, including even the study meeting
at Virginia Beach. Although that meeting was held some three months
after war broke out in Europe, a number of member countries of the IPR,
namely, the United States, the USSR, the Philippines and the Netherlands
and Netherlands Indies, ‘were still at peace, and except in China and Japan,
war had not yet begun to make its full impact felt, even upon the belligerent
nations.’^89 By contrast, all the member-countries participating at the Mont
Tremblant conference were at war or had been occupied by enemy forces.^90
Despite the difficulties involved in overseas travel at the time, repre-
sentatives of Australia, China, India, Great Britain, the Netherlands
and Netherlands Indies, and Fighting France came by plane to North
America. In terms of the composition of its membership, the conference
was noteworthy for the fact that for the first time an Indian delegation
participated in an IPR conference. India’s only previous involvement in
the conference consisted in the presence of an observer at the study meet-
ing at Virginia Beach. It was also the first time that a representative of
Thailand attended, the representative in question being Mom Rajawongse
Seni Pramoj, the Free Thai minister to the United States and it was the
first time since 1927 that there was independent Korean participation.^91
Absent from the conference were representatives of the Japanese
Council of the IPR: with Japan now at war with the Allied powers and
firmly in the Axis camp, the Japanese Council was no longer playing a
part in the international work of the IPR. In connection with this, it
should be noted that the constitutional problem that saw the ‘modest’
gathering at Virginia Beach termed a study meeting rather than a confer-
ence and lead to the decision being taken that no formal meeting of the
Pacific Council would be held there, was resolved at Mont Tremblant:
(^89) W. L. Holland, preface to International Secretariat, Institute of Pacific Relations, War
and Peace in the Pacific: A Preliminary Report of the Eighth Conference of the Institute of
Pacific Relations on Wartime and Post-War Co-operation of the United Nations in the Pacific
and the Far East, Mont Tremblant, Quebec, December 4– 14 , 1942 (London: Royal Institute
of International Affairs, 1943), v. Holland stated that a preliminary report was issued in
response to requests that a summary of the meeting be produced as quickly as possible. He
added that a fuller report of the conference proceedings would be issued later as Problems
of the Pacific, 1942. In the event, this volume was never published.
(^90) Ibid.
(^91) Ibid., vi, 157.