A Foreign Affairs Laboratory
The dinner at the Guildhall to commemorate the thirtieth birthday of Chatham House came too late for mention in the last issue of The Spectator, but it cannot be allowed to go completely unnoticed. The growth of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, from the day when it was conceived by a little band of mainly temporary officials who had worked together on international problems through the exacting months of the Peace Conference at Paris in 1919, has been remarkable. Thanks to large donations from various sources, some of them American, Chatham House (as Mr. Lionel Curtis, to whom more than any man, credit for its foundation is due, urged that it normally should be called) has entered on a wide field of work such as the income from members' subscriptions could never support. Apart from the publication of such standard works as Temperley's History of the (1919) Peace Conference, Professor Toynbee's annual Survey of International Affairs and his already classic Study of History and many others, the R.I.I.A. has, through its general and sectional meetings, its comprehensive library and press-cutting collection, established a literally unique position, not in this country but in the world, as a centre for the objective study of international affairs. While it studiously avoids the formulation or expression of any policy of its own the individual views expressed at its meetings inevitably find reflection, so far as their intrinsic value may dictate, in speeches elsewhere and in articles in many journals. Chatham House has been so successful that it may sometimes wonder a little apprehensively where its success may lead it. But its essential function is and always must be to marshal facts, discuss them freely and make them available wherever needed. As the Prime Minister observed at last week's anniversary dinner, "if there were a Chatham House in Moscow and Warsaw, in Prague, Bucharest and Sofia, how much more hopeful would the world outlook be."
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