A League of Savants.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18184, 22 September 1924, Page 8

A League of Savants.

One of the strangest messages we have yet had from Geneva appeared in our cables on Saturday morning. We were told on .Saturday that the League of Nations Committeo on Intellectual Cooperation—the "C.1.C." of which some few have heard—was considering a French offer of an institute in Paris devoted to tho co-ordination of scientific investigation throughout tho world, and now we learn that tho offer has been accepted, with tho Chateau of Tincennnes as the Committee's headquarters, a grant of a million francs annually for expenses, and a forlorn protest from an Australian delegate against the folly of attempting to cultivate internationalism in a non-neutral country. Most of U9 liavc never thought about this Committee, or even heard of it, and if wo do now begin to think about it there is probably no corner in our minds in which we ean build a little altar of hope for it. For as Professor Gilbert Murray confesses in a melancholy justification of the Committee's place in the League, there is "something pretentious and almost "insincero" to Anglo-Saxon ears in the- Committee's very name. It is difficult for an Englishman to believe in the sincerity of resolutions to bo good and wise, and it is more difficult still to believe in their practical usefulness. Tho Professor is probably right also in suggesting that a further reason for Anglo-Saxon coldness is that the-Anglo-Saxon "does not respect, or "even like, the intellect as much as "the French and Germans do." The Englishman, he says, calls his roads and streets and towns after kings and battles and ground landlords, or sometime? after generals and Prime Ministers, but hardly ever after scientists or scholars or poets. While the French call their public places after all sorts of savants and writers, and are "quite "capable of naming a public place "from tho date of Pasteur's birth or | "the first performance of Ilernani," it ! has not yet entered .the British imagination that "Sir James Frazer is as important as Mr Mallaby-Deeley, or Mr "A, E. Housman tho equal of Lord "Derby." And until the British mind can bo brought to a state in which those comparisons do not seem absurd —or seem absurd for a different reason from the present one—'Professor Gilbert Murray fears that wo shall never understand tho interest, and even onthnsiasm, with which the C.I.C. is regarded brother nations. And he admits sadly tliat it is not easy yet to give a glowing account of what the C.I.C. has done or is trying to do. It has conducted enquiry into the conditions of intellectual workers in the distressed countries of Europe, but, having had, no money, has done next to nothing to afford relief. It has "thought out schemes" for assisting brain-workers and preventing the complete collapse of intellectual life in the Eastern countries. It has made a heroic attempt —mainly by prcI paring and publishing extracts of all written contributions to knowledge—to | bring scientists in all countries within easier reach of the work done in the chief | centres. It has evolved what it claims is a simple and practical scheme for enabling librarians to keep in tonch with the most valuable books published in other countries, subject by subject. It has organised, and is still organising, the exchange of teachers between universities and the easier mo%'ement of students, and it is preparing an index of tho universities of tho world, with their teachers and courses. But that seems to exhaust its activities to date, and few of them, Professor Murray agrees, are activities to fire the ordinary imagination. Wo shall have to hope that the position is as M. Bourgeois put it in Saturday's message —that without intellectual co-operation there cannot be a League of Nations;

and if we believe that, as wc sure

should, we can wish, even if -we dare not hope, that this magnificent chateau, with its million a year endowment, will become in time one of the most sacred temples of civilisation.