22

population problems, such as the effects of excessive population increase or decrease, the migration of peoples, tensions created by minority groups, the cultural status of displaced populations, and the conflicts arising from varying customs and standards and from political restrictions. The whole study will call for a new type of co-operation among social scientists, anthropologists, geographers, and psychologists. In such an elaborate undertaking full recourse will be had to the National Commissions of member States and to the related groups working within the United Nations. Another major scientific project is a study of the problem of satisfactory living in the equatorial forest zone. As a concrete beginning it is proposed that UNESCO should take over the coordination of the various researches by many nations on the resources and conditions of life in the great Amazonian forest, with a view to establishing later an Equatorial Survey Institute. A similar proposal relates to the study, in collaboration with other United Nations organizations, of the urgent scientific problems arising in those regions of the world where the majority of the population is under-nourished. As a first stage, UNESCO will recruit teams of specialists expert in nutritional science and food technology to attack the problem in three sample regions—the Amazon Forest, India, and China. We must confess that these last projects seem to us to bear a different relation to the maintenance of peace than do the projects mentioned earlier. In addition to these specific scientific projects, UNESCO's programme makes provision for a more general type of service to scientists. As in other cultural fields, there is a plan for the interchange of scientists at all grades, UNESCO will administer fellowship grants made available to it, and will establish a limited number <?f fellowships from its own funds. It will also stimulate, and to Some extent subsidize, meetings of international scientific and other learned organizations, and will co-operate with international scientific unions. Travelling panels of scientists will be sent to various countries on invitation. In regions remote from the main centres of scientific research and technology experience has shown that a small mobile team can have an effect out of all proportion to its size. Lest it should appear that UNESCO is planning in any part of its programme to interfere with strictly national rights and responsibilities, it may be well to quote the final sentences of the report of the Progtfamme Commission:— "It is sufficient, we think, to state here that, although these various proposals are advanced as proposals for action by UNESCO, they are, in the last analysis, proposals advanced for action by the peoples of the world. Without the collaboration of the member Nations the undertakings of UNESCO —undertakings which touch most nearly the lives of peoples everywhere—can have no reality and no true meaning. In presenting, therefore,