Stephen Spender, the well-known English poet, is among those intellectuals who seek to play an active part in efforts to meet the problems that face the modern world; this sense of responsibility led him to Spain during the Civil War and it brings him today into all efforts to establish lines of communication and cooperation among men of thought throughout the world. In a recent book, European Witness, Mr. Spender describes a journey through postwar Europe and his efforts to make contact with the constructive intellectual life of Germany. In “The Intellectuals and Europe’s Future,” published in the January COMMENTARY, he reported on the Rencontres de Genève, a recent conference of European intellectuals. Here he examines what may prove to be the most important of all attempts at international cultural and intellectual cooperation: the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
_____________
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco) exists under the charter of the United Nations, which called upon the members of UN to create an organization to promote the cause of peace by means of international cooperation in science, education, and culture.
During the first prenatal months of its existence Unesco was a preparatory commission drawing up a program, a plan of action. This program, presented to the first General Conference of Unesco in Paris last December, is an interesting survey of the possible ways in which intellectual collaboration can be organized. It includes plans for rehabilitation, in science, education, and culture, of countries devastated by war; proposals for world surveys of such problems as illiteracy; certain model scientific projects for introducing technical machinery into countries where it is lacking; schemes for promoting the translation of important books into foreign languages; an international theater institute; information services in education, science, and culture, etc. Of course, several of these activities are already being carried out in other ways and by other organizations, but there are remarkable gaps in present intellectual exchanges, and there is certainly a great deal which Unesco should be able to do.
_____________
Dr. Julian Huxley, the newly appointed Director General of Unesco, has been criticized for putting forward his own evolutionary philosophy as the philosophy of Unesco. Whether or not one feels that evolutionism is too scientific a view for an organization which should include all the creeds of all the nations of the world, it is simple and useful to regard Unesco itself as a phase in the evolution of a modern international society.
The world (let us for this purpose assume) is evolving towards a phase of world government. However, world government, when it is achieved, probably will not resemble the centralized government by political parties which we mean by government today, thinking, as we do, of the examples of national government which we see around us. World government may rather be the development of many international organizations, working on parallel lines, which will create conditions of cooperation between nations wherever cooperation is helpful and necessary.
To take one example, the world seems to be on the verge of a new industrial revolution as the result of the harnessing of atomic energy. This is an extremely dramatic example, because the useful development of atomic energy is only possible if there is a great deal of cooperation between nations; and its destructive use would destroy, on the widest international scale, our civilization. Other examples of international organizations of world government now in development are those for the world distribution of food and for economic planning.
One can imagine that the history of these newly emerging social forms, written in five hundred years’ time, might be very Huxleyan. It would be the history of vast organizations with strange names such as AMGOT, UNRRA, Unesco, crawling out of the cerebral dens of a Wellsian world brain, to grow, expand, become too vast, too bloated, and then be thrown aside by the evolutionary historic process and replaced by smaller, more efficient forms.
Yet looking ahead in this way, one may hazard the guess that world government will not mean centralized government from one place. It will mean rather the development of many organizations, many “internations,” to increase the interrelatedness of nations for the purpose of world cooperation so as to ensure peace and enable each nation to take part in a development which is only possible now to each nation.
_____________
What we are beginning to see already is that such international cooperation is not exclusively political, in the limited modern sense of politics. The nations of the world might today agree to differ on politics and yet find enormous fields of development in which they could cooperate: in rehabilitation, in economics, in scientific development, in education, in culture. To some extent, such a development is, indeed, taking place. International cooperation, which gets stuck in purely political controversy, yet moves forward in certain concrete tasks of rehabilitation, and also, to some extent, in cultural relations.
Of course, there are stages where all international relations become ideological, and therefore political. For example, the conflict between the ideas of the East and the West entered considerably into the General Conference of Unesco at Paris in December 1946: and the absence of the Soviet Union from the membership of Unesco dramatizes this conflict. Yet it remains true that where, in political discussion, there would be perhaps a complete impasse, there is in Unesco an interchange of ideas between East and West. In this interchange lies hope of future understanding.
Thus Unesco is an experiment towards one of those international organizations which, in their perfected form, may exist in the world of the future as internations—links in a world where there are still separate nationalities, but where each nation uses these international organs for giving and receiving in the interests of the whole world.
We must regard the present stage of the world’s history as a painful period of transition corresponding to the phase of the industrial revolution in England at the beginning of the 19th century. But it is a much wider revolution, affecting far larger populations, and coming after a period of even greater disaster than that which followed the Napoleonic Wars. The word re-education, which we have designated for the Germans, is really the label applying to our whole world: and the history lessons of lived history are taught with blood and tears.
Therefore I do not regard organizations such as Unesco as final, and I do not subscribe to such opinions as “If UN or Unesco fail, then we are lost and there can be no basis of world cooperation.” Rather, I regard these organizations as experiments, perhaps to be replaced by other and better organizations, perhaps capable of learning their own lessons and transforming themselves.
_____________
It is one thing to draw up a program for Unesco, such as that presented to the first Conference, and outlined above. It is quite another story to carry it out. What Unesco will be able to do depends on what Unesco is. As the General Conference in Paris proceeded, the nature of Unesco organization as it at present exists gradually emerged from the fog of discussion.
What first of all became apparent was that the organization—or rather its Secretariat— situated at Unesco House in the Avenue Kléber, Paris (formerly the Hotel Majestic, then headquarters of the Gestapo, then headquarters of the United States Army, now headquarters of the Unesco Secretariat), is only an instrument, the organ of the national commissions of the nations belonging to Unesco. During the conference the delegates of these commissions formed committees which considered the programs for action put forward by the Secretariat. The tendency of the committees was to cut down each program to a minimum of projects—to those which were considered most important, which were realizable within a reasonable amount of time, and which were feasible within the limits of what Mr. Benton described as a “fledgling budget.”
It also became evident that it was not the wish of the delegates of the General Conference that the Secretariat of Unesco should set themselves up as arbiters of taste. They should carry out the instructions given to them by the Executive Committee of the delegates representing the countries belonging to Unesco. Thus—to take an example—it is not the function of the Section of Letters in the Secretariat of Unesco to select what books should be translated from the literature of each country. It is the task of the national commission of each country to select these books and then to use the machinery of the Section of Letters as an agency for translation into other languages.
The limitation of the budget to $6,000,000, and the controversy about the election of the Director General, Dr. Julian Huxley, emphasized still further the fact that the Secretariat is not an independent organization, like a broadcasting company, but an instrument of the nations belonging to Unesco.
Therefore, the limits of Unesco will be in the first place not the limitations of the Secretariat itself, but those of the nations belonging to Unesco. And here we are brought face to face with the significance of the Soviet Union’s refusal to join Unesco. For without the Soviet Union, Unesco is in danger of becoming or of being represented as the cultural agency of a Western bloc directed against the East. Every effort has been made to induce the Soviet Union to come in, but this does not of course obviate the danger of Unesco becoming a bridgehead rather than a bridge between the East and the West as long as the Soviet Union remains outside.
_____________
Another problem which must be stated is that Unesco may become a vast international organism into which each nation projects all that is most academic, average, and anemic in its cultural life. The International Art Exhibition held at the Palais de Tokio in connection with the first General Conference of Unesco was a useful and alarming example of what happens when officials of many countries combine to produce an international cultural manifestation.
Apparently, the officials in each country of the world agree that every interest and organization in the country must be represented. They consult all the art organizations and get each to select works by its members. The result is a universal slick average-ness amazing to the eye of the beholder. It is as though officialdom of the world had discovered hundreds of painters all capable of painting the same picture combining the qualities of a discreet academicism with a controlled awareness of the modern. In such an exhibition a surrealist fantasy, the portrait of a general, a still life, all have the air of being, after all, the same picture by one official artist.
The International Art Exhibition was, indeed, a minor catastrophe. Of course, this manifestation had no connection with the main tasks of the Secretariat, but nonetheless it is a warning that the Secretariat may be asked by the national commissions to handle literature and ideas as academic and feeble as the majority of these pictures.
I have explained that the Secretariat is simply the instrument of the national commissions. Nevertheless, it is the men and women working in Unesco House who will in fact be responsible for the success or failure of Unesco. The Executive Committee can, of course, do nothing without the instrumentality of the Secretariat: not only this, but there is as yet no established machinery and routine for carrying out the projects of the Preparatory Commission. The Secretariat, having suggested these projects, now has to create them in action. The way in which they will be realized depends on the capacity and the human quality of the personnel who are busy with them. A number of projects have been indicated, but now the whole machinery for carrying out these tasks—and, indeed, the tasks themselves— must be invented. Although it is almost inevitable that there will be a certain academicism about the translations, the exchanges, the lectures, the conferences organized by Unesco, these things will depend greatly on the spirit of the Secretariat itself.
I can illustrate this argument by saying that although Unesco on the official level represents the national commissions, one must never forget that if it is to be a living organization, it must also represent the intellectual life of the world. It must represent not just official committees, but also the scientists, the philosophers, the educationalists, the musicians, the artists, and the poets of all the countries of the world. Dr. William G. Carr, member of the United States National Commission for Unesco, in an interesting lecture in Paris during the Mois de l’Unesco (or “Unesco Month”), said that if Unesco did not represent in a direct and personal way the aspirations towards better teaching of the small and unknown schoolteacher of a Midwestern town in the United States, it would have failed. It is equally true that if it does not interest in a direct way men such as Picasso and Casals and Eluard, Eliot and Auden, Henry Moore and Benjamin Britten (to name quite at random a few artists who have shown their interest in public affairs), as well as the foremost scientists and philosophers of the world, it will have failed.
_____________
Here again, we are brought back to the problems of the Secretariat. For it is not to the national committees that the intellectuals of the world will look, but to the heads of sections in Unesco House. During the General Conference in Paris it became evident already that for Julian Huxley to be Director General of Unesco meant a great deal to the intellectuals of France; but for him to resign and become a member of the Executive Committee of Delegates of National Commissions would have meant little or nothing. Some Paris editors of literary reviews met me to explain that if there was no member of the Secretariat whom they respected as having an international position in the world of letters, they would take no interest in, and expect nothing from, Unesco.
The personnel of the Secretariat is of great importance, because in so far as intellectual life is already to a great extent international, the intellectuals of the separate countries will look not only to their national commissions, but also—and perhaps far more—to the international Secretariat. It is important therefore that men of real distinction, and not place-hunters or people chosen by the academy-choosing methods of most national commissions, should be represented in the highest posts of Unesco.
_____________
At the same time I have to admit that the conditions of work in the Secretariat are unfavorable to anyone with serious intellectual work of his own. J. B. Priestley, on his return from the General Conference, said over the BBC that the very thought of the atmosphere of Unesco House gave him a headache. The trouble with such an international organization, with its committees, its meetings of national commissions, its moving about from one center of the world to another for the General Conference, its photographers, its intrigues, etc., etc., is that it degenerates rapidly into a kind of journalists’ paradise. One should not accept such a degeneration as inevitable, for it would in fact mean that nearly everyone who set any value on his own individual development, on his own research or creative work, would leave or be driven out, to be replaced by officials, journalists, and administrators.
The conditions of work of the new international organizations which are springing up are worthy of study, and as far as I know they have not been studied at all. Everyone seems to be surprised when international organizations develop all the symptoms of being international rackets. Yet when one considers the conditions under which the staffs of UNRRA, UN, Unesco, etc., work it seems almost inevitable that they should be rackets. Many of the most serious people resign or are driven out. Meanwhile the temptations offered to adventurers, amateurs, and political failures to press for jobs in these organizations (if such people need tempting) are considerable. Before the war certain English people used to live abroad to avoid income tax. Now they have the opportunity of joining one of the new inter-nations.
Yet Unesco must be filled with men and women with a sense of vocation and of mission. Every means should be studied for producing an atmosphere in which concentration, attention, and seriousness are possible among the staff of the Secretariat. It is more important that the heads of sections should live in conditions where they can carry out their work and retain their own individuality than that they should travel about all over the world like journalists. Everything should be done to combat the centrifugal tendencies of an international organization and to create a center, without, on the other hand, that center leading to over-centralization.
Ultimately, it seems to me that the most difficult task of all for Unesco is the creating of the right conditions under which the staff of the Secretariat can carry out its work. It seems also to be the problem of which most people connected with Unesco show the least awareness.
_____________
The work of Unesco is only now beginning. In a year’s time, it will still be too early to be either optimistic or pessimistic about Unesco. Its success depends, though, on whether four conditions are satisfied within the next two or three years.
First: if depends on the national commissions, of which the organization itself is only the instrument. When the nations of the world are prepared to spend in one year on educational, cultural, and scientific relations what they spend in one week on war or the preparation for war, Unesco will have a strong enough financial backing to achieve quite ambitious projects. It is up to the governments of the world to see, also, that Unesco does not become an instrument of rivalry between the ideologies of East and West.
Second: it is essential that within two years Unesco should have achieved several limited but concrete successes in carrying out projects large enough to impress a world public.
Third: it is essential that the Secretariat should contain at least a dozen men of first-rate ability and with a sense of the mission of Unesco who will create confidence in an organization that may very well be regarded either with envy or disgust as a bureaucratic racket.
Fourth and last: it is essential that Unesco should be felt not only by governments but by the intellectuals of the world to be an organization which represents what they consider the highest and best in their intellectual activities, and that it does not lapse into abstract researches or sterile academicism.
The organizers at the center of Unesco must be vigilant and inspired to achieve these four conditions without which Unesco will fail.
_____________
