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GLOBAL HISTORIES OF EDUCATION
The International Bureau

of Education (1925–1968)
”The Ascent From the Individual to the Universal“
Rita Hofstetter
Bernard Schneuwly
Global Histories of Education
Series Editors
Christian Ydesen
Department of Culture and Learning
Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark
Eugenia Roldan Vera

Cinvestav-Coapa
Mexico City, Estado de México, Mexico
Klaus Dittrich
Literature and Cultural Studies
Education University of Hong Kong
Tai Po, Hong Kong
Linda Chisholm
Education Rights and Transformation
University of Johannesburg
Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
We are very pleased to announce the ISCHE Global Histories of Education
book series. The International Standing Conference for the History of
Education has organized conferences in the field since 1978. Thanks to
our collaboration with Palgrave Macmillan we now offer an edited book
series for the publication of innovative scholarship in the history of
education.
This series seeks to engage with historical scholarship that analyzes edu-
cation within a global, world, or transnational perspective. Specifically, it
seeks to examine the role of educational institutions, actors, technologies
as well as pedagogical ideas that for centuries have crossed regional and
national boundaries. Topics for publication may include the study of edu-
cational networks and practices that connect national and colonial
domains, or those that range in time from the age of Empire to decoloni-
zation. These networks could concern the international movement of
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[email protected]. Preliminary inquiries are welcome and encouraged.
Rita Hofstetter • Bernard Schneuwly
The International
Bureau of Education
(1925–1968)
“The Ascent From the Individual to the Universal”
Rita Hofstetter Bernard Schneuwly
Université Genève Université Genève
Genève, Switzerland Genève, Switzerland
ISSN 2731-6408 ISSN 2731-6416 (electronic)

Global Histories of Education
ISBN 978-3-031-41307-0 ISBN 978-3-031-41308-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41308-7
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Foreword
This book makes the history of the International Bureau of Education

more accessible. This narrative is still largely unknown to the public (espe-
cially the English-speaking), even though, under the leadership of Jean
Piaget, it was the first intergovernmental institution in the field of educa-
tion. In this respect, it was a precursor of UNESCO, with which it col-
laborated from 1947 on, and which it joined in 1968.
The cover image could be a symbolic representation of the IBE’s ambi-
tion: to build unity in diversity, by considering the way in which sedi-
mented territories are arranged in relation to one another, by dealing with
their convergences and divergences, their diverse materials and textures.
Those who built the IBE were in fact driven by the universalist conviction
that all the territories of the planet belong to the same and unique world
constituted by the erratic plurality of their formats and cultural bases; a
plurality—and the way in which it evolves and fits into the environments—
that precisely intrigued these comparativists in education and specialists in
developmental processes, including child development.
The IBE with its astonishing longevity has been the focus of our atten-
tion for the past ten years, as we were eager to understand how it evolved
over the twentieth century, while the internationalisation of educational
phenomena was accelerating and a new global governance was imposed in
this field. Initiated by the work of the authors of this book, the research
was founded, from 2016 on, by the Swiss National Science Fund grant
(N° 100011_169747), directed by Hofstetter and Droux, and carried out
by the Équipe de recherche en histoire sociale de l’éducation (Érhise). This
has led to numerous works to which 15 other researchers, mostly
v
vi FOREWORD
historians, some early in their careers, others more experienced, have con-
tributed over five years.1 The specific contributions of each of them enrich
this volume, which is therefore indebted to the dense seminars of collec-
tive work. We will not fail to refer to them at the appropriate points. Three
theses have also been completed. Boss (2022) approaches the IBE by pen-
etrating the beating heart of the Secretariat: via prosopographical
approaches, she sheds light on the profiles and trajectories of its members
and examines their working tools and techniques, as well as their social
circles and networks of collaborations. This allows her to identify how the
premises of comparative education as a new disciplinary field were built
up, step by step, through conferences, surveys and exhibitions. Brylinski
(2022) focuses on the IBE as an intergovernmental agency, questioning
its “utopia” of recommending peaceful education at a time of heightened
nationalism. Her specificity resides in the critical look at the (mis)alliances,
consultations and negotiations that allowed the construction of this inter-
governmentalism by pointing out, thanks to enlightening network analy-
ses, the political interferences in this forum which was supposed to be
preserved from them. As for Loureiro’s thesis (forthcoming), it is distin-
guished by the emphasis placed on the interconnections with Latin
America, in order to identify the modalities, channels and contents circu-
lating in both directions, between the international Geneva of the inter-
war period and South America, which was also aspiring to identify itself on
the international scene. Specific case studies, such as Brazil, also make it
possible to identify how its representatives reappropriated constructed
knowledge and participated in its redefinition.
International scientific seminars organised by the authors and by
Érhise have provided the opportunity to discuss specific methodological,
Joëlle Droux, Cécile Boss, Émeline Brylinski, Aurélie De Mestral, and Michel Christian,
1
Anouk Darme-Xu, Blaise Extermann, Marie-Élise Hunyadi, Irina Leopoldoff, Valérie Lussi
Borer, Clarice Loureiro, Frédéric Mole, Anne Monnier, Viviane Rouiller and Sylviane
Tinembart.
FOREWORD vii
theoretical and empirical issues with particularly qualified experts,2 to whom

we extend our warmest thanks. Many colleagues, through their own inves-
tigations and writings, their critical reviews and discussions, their transla-
tions and invitations, are present on these pages. This is evidenced by the
many venues where we have been invited to present our work: Amsterdam,
Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Budapest, Cadiz, Dublin, Freiburg, Geneva,
Groningen, Lausanne, Lisbon, London, Lyon, Moscow, Paris, Porto,
Rome, St. Petersburg, Uppsala, Warsaw, Zurich, and Chicago, New York,
San Francisco, Washington, as well as Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, São
Paulo, San Luis de Potosí, Quito and, more briefly, Bombay, Hanoi, Ho
Chi Minh City and Hue.
We have also had the opportunity to submit the first results of our
investigations to critical discussion in numerous formalised scientific net-
works, both in Switzerland (Swiss Historical Society, Swiss Society for
Research in Education) and at the international level such as the confer-
ences of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the
Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), the European
Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH), the European
Conference on Educational Research (ECER) and the International
Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE).
Our investigations took advantage of the wealth of heritage preserved
in a variety of sites and institutions, libraries and archival collections, first
and foremost the Archives Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau (AIJJR), the
Jean Piaget Foundation (AJP), the League of Nations (LoN) and the
United Nations (UN) and of course those of the IBE’s own Documentation
and Archives Centre, whose non-published documents for the period in
2
Abdeljalil Akkari and Thibaut Lauwerier (University of Geneva), Iván Bajomi (Eötvös
Loránd University, Budapest), Jeremy Burman (Groningen University), Léonora Dugonjić-
Rodwin (Uppsala University, IDHES, École normale supérieure-Paris Saclay), Joyce
Goodman (University of Winchester), Martin M. Grandjean (University of Lausanne), Alix
Heiniger (University of Fribourg), Daniel Laqua (Northumbria University, Newcastle),
Claire Lemercier (CNRS—Centre for the sociology of organisations, Paris), Damiano
Matasci (Universities of Lausanne and Geneva), Antonio Nóvoa (University of Lisbon),
Emmanuelle Picard (École normale supérieure, Lyon), André Robert (University of Lyon 2
Lumière), Marc Ratcliff and his team (Camille Jaccard, Ariane Noël) (University of Geneva),
Rebecca Rogers (University of Paris Descartes), Gita Steiner-Khamsi (Norrag and Columbia
University), Françoise Thébaud (University of Avignon) and Sylvain Wagnon (University of
Montpellier).
viii FOREWORD
question have now been digitalised. It is thanks to the generous welcome

and support of the people in charge of these various archives that we have
been able to carry out our work, for which we thank them. Our gratitude
goes to the experts (Sébastien-Akira Alix and Christian Ydesen who have
carefully commented on the whole manuscript and have helped to improve
its clarity and relevance). The final production of the book benefited from
the specific complementary contributions of Viviane Rouiller.
Our deepest gratitude goes to Moya Jones who translated the text with
unwavering expertise and readiness. Translating with such subtlety pre-
supposes the ability, which is incomparable here, to make the problematic
and the style of the authors one’s own. This requirement has important
advantages: it reveals forms of language that conceal paucities of thought,
helping us to make our analyses clearer without compromising the com-
plexity of the subject; it involves reviewing a text in detail in order to get
a deep understanding of its general coherence, thereby highlighting
inconsistencies; it contributes to the process of the circulation and inter-
nationalisation of the subject, which is particularly important when it
comes to unearthing the little-known work of our predecessors.
The translation and publication of this book in open access have been
financed by a grant from the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)
of the Swiss Confederation (2021–2022) and the iconographic credits
have been generously offered by the IBE, the AIJJR and the AJP. To them
as well, we express our gratitude.
Geneva, Switzerland Rita Hofstetter

15 April 2023 Bernard Schneuwly

References
Boss, C. (2022). Une histoire des pratiques de comparaison du Bureau international
d’éducation. Contextes et trajectoires collectives (1925–1945) [Unpublished doc-
toral thesis, University of Geneva]. https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/
unige:164477
Brylinski, É. (2022). Recommander l’utopie? Construction d’une coopération inter-
gouvernementale par le Bureau international de l’éducation au milieu du 20e
siècle [Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Geneva]. https://archive-
ouverte.unige.ch/unige:164046
Loureiro, C. (forthcoming). La coopération pédagogique promue par le Bureau
international d’éducation (BIE): les interconnexions avec l’Amérique latine
(1925–1952) [Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Geneva].
Contents
1 G
eneral Introduction 1
The IBE: A Matrix for Educational Internationalism 3
An Increasingly Universal Orientation 4
Universal/Universality: Conceptual Tools for an Investigation 6
Our Theme: The Universal and the IBE—Ambitions, Limits and
Contradictions 9
Structure of the Book: Five Complementary Points of View 11
Exploiting Exceptional Documentary Heritage 17
In View of a Conclusion 20
References 21
Part I The IBE: An Actor of Its Time 27
2 The
Primacy of Education to Pacify the World? 31
Compensating for the Shortcomings of the Treaty of Versailles 32
Dithering at the LoN 35
The Institut Rousseau, Figurehead of Educational
Internationalism? 37
References 44
3 The
IBE: A Federating Platform 47
A Corporate Association, Gilded with Great Names 47
The Perilous Challenge of Federating Social Movements 51
ix
x Contents
Faced with Competition, a Strategy to Review 54

References 59
4 A
chieving Intergovernmental Legitimacy 61
Creating New Bodies, Sealing New Alliances 61
The First Intergovernmental Conference on Education 65
References 71
5 During
the War, the IBE Prepares the Post-War Period 75
Preserving Its Mission of Educational and Intellectual Mutual
Aid 76
Getting Recognition for the IBE’s Pioneering Work 78
References 80
6 “A
Marriage of Convenience” with UNESCO? 83
Preparing Negotiations to Remain Autonomous 83
Granting the IBE “All the Honours as UNESCO’s ‘Father’
and Assigning it the Role of ‘Little Brother’” 87
References 91
7 Towards
a Destabilising Universality: The Swan Song? 95
A Process Full of Pitfalls 95
“Like the Phoenix, the IBE Will Rise from Its Ashes” 99
References 101
Conclusion to Part I 103
Part II Educational Reformism, Pacifist Internationalism,

Universalist Ideals 107
8 F
rom the Institut Rousseau to the IBE: Promoting a
New Era111
A “Copernican Revolution” Endorsed by Psychopedagogy 112
A Positioning Intended to Embody the “spirit of Geneva” 114
A Unifying and Reconciling Neutrality? 117
References 125
Contents xi
9 Facing
Equivocations, Tightrope Acrobatics129
Avoiding Any Ambiguous Link … with the NEF Too 129
In the LoN’s Compromising Sphere of Influence 131
Challenging the IIIC by Advocating Neutrality, Objectivity
and Diversity 134
References 146
10 The
IBE Axiom: “Rising from the Individual to the
Universal”149
Universalisable Knowledge and Teaching Methods 149
Command Nature by Obeying It: From Egocentrism to
Solidarity 151
Democracy and Conflicts of Reciprocity 154
Universal Aims: Cultural Diversities vs World Culture 157
References 161
Conclusion to Part II 163
Part III The Modus Operandi of the ICPEs 167
11 Scenography
of the First Intergovernmental Parliament
on Education171
An Almost Perennial Rationale 171
Adjustments for a Larger Audience 176
Analysing the Main Features of the Education World 179
Resolving the Crucial Education Problems of the Planet 181
References 187
12 A
Commitment That Was All the More Binding Because
It Was Freely Chosen189
Making Freedom a Responsibility 189
Firmer Contractualisation, Under the Patronage of UNESCO 192
“Hypocrisy, a Tribute Paid by Vice to Virtue?” 196
An Original Sin: The Instrumentalisation of Expertise? 198
References 199
xii Contents
13 “Raising
Comparative Education to the Level of
Intergovernmental Cooperation”201
Rosselló’s Dynamic Comparative Pedagogy 202
Piaget’s Psychopedagogical Theories Transposed to the ICPEs 205
References 212
Conclusion to Part III 215
Part IV Focusing on Universality: Geopolitical Issues 219
14 Towards
a Universality of Voices223
Steady Growth in the Number of Countries Interacting with
the IBE 223
A More Inclusive Universality 225
References 228
15 Joining
the IBE? The Influence of Global Power Relations231
Lobbying: A Matter of Survival 231
Three Waves of Membership 234
Regions of the World Unevenly Represented 236
References 242
16 Contradictions
Linked to the Universalist Aim245
Authoritarian Regimes and the Call for Democracies 245
Interference of the Cold War 250
References 258
17 Education
Is a Political Issue261
Loosening the Colonial Straitjacket 262
Nothing Could Restrain the “Irreversible Determination”
of the African Continent 265
The Formalist Position Challenged in the Name of Human
Dignity 268
The Expulsion of Portugal, a Service to “All Humanity” 270
“The fact that we are weak politically […] is the strength
of our objective and active neutrality” 272
References 278
Contents xiii
Conclusion to Part IV 281
Part V The Universalisation of the Benefits of Education? 285
18 School
Subjects in the Service of Peace and the Individual291
School Subjects: Contrasted and Complementary 292
Different Methods According to the Type of Subject 294
Content and Development of the Child 300
Balance in the Teaching Content 301
References 304
19 Teachers:
“Architects of the Future of Humanity” 307
A High Level of Pedagogical Training 308
Training All Teachers in Higher Education Institutions 309
Education Sciences: The Profession’s Reference Discipline 310
Opposing Ideologies Subtly Expressed 313
The Status of Teachers 314
References 317
20 On
the Fate of Women: “Equality Does Not Mean
Identity”319
Pioneering International Surveys 320
Male Bastions Solidly Preserved 322
1952: Putting an End to Relegation “the Sanctuary of the
Family” 324
The Essentialisation of Differences… 325
Equality, but Under What Conditions? 328
In a “Democracy of Utopia”… 330
The Tipping Point Towards Raising Awareness of Girls’ Rights
to Education? 331
References 333
21 From
Educational Justice to Social Justice337
A Proactive Policy for Educating the World 338
From the Right to Be Different, to the Difference in Rights 340
Fighting Illiteracy, Symbol of Modern Slavery 344
Behind Equal Opportunity for All, a Tenacious Ideology of Merit 345
References 349
xiv Contents
22 The
“Family of Nations” and Its Racial, Cultural and
Colonial Discriminations351
The Equality of Races and Cultures, a “Fine Theme for Speeches
but Discrimination Remains” 352
The Colonies: From Invisibilisation to a Raising of Awareness 354
Between Resilience and Community of Suffering? 358
The Debt the West Owes to the East and the South 360
“An Unfortunate Human Race” Clinging to a Little Rock 362
References 364
Conclusion to Part V 367
General Conclusion371
Appendices383
Sources391
References395
Index419
Abbreviations1
A-IBE Archives of the International Bureau of Education

AIJJR Archives Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau
AJP Archives Jean Piaget
CAME Conference of Allied Ministers of Education
Érhise Équipe de recherche en histoire sociale de l’éducation [Team of
research on the social history of education]
IBE International Bureau of Education
ICIC International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation
ICPE International Conference on Public Education
IIIC International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation
ILO International Labour Office
INGO International Nongovernmental Organisation
IO Intergovernmental organisation
LIEN Ligue internationale pour l’éducation nouvelle [International
League for New Education]
LoN League of Nations
NEF New Education Fellowship
OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
OIC Organisation of Intellectual Cooperation
PEN Pour l’Ère nouvelle [For the New Era; journal of LIEN –
see above]
1
Only those abbreviations that appear in more than one chapter have been included in
this list.
xv
xvi ABBREVIATIONS
R Recommendation
UIA Union of International Associations
UN United Nations
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
WFEA World Federation of Education Associations
List of Figures
Fig. 8.1 Networks between Germany and other states in the section
on peace education of the Bulletins from 1929 to 1932
(Note: in this presentation, we don’t differentiate the
contents of the links) 122
Fig. 8.2 Networks between the USA and other states in the section
on peace education of the Bulletins from 1929 to 1932
(Note: in this presentation, we do not differentiate the
contents of the links) 124
Fig. 11.1 General schema of the ICPEs’ scenography (1934–1968):
global organisation and zoom on the course of the ICPEs 178
Fig. 11.2 References to educational models during the 1934 ICPE,
by state 185
Fig. 11.3 Graphical representation of quotes on the issue of
compulsory schooling (ICPE, 1951). (a) Unimodal network
(1951), extracted sub-network, based on citation links that
“value the educational experience of states.” (b) Bimodal
network, subnetwork selected from Ceylon, India, Iran,
Israel and Pakistan tops 186
Fig. 14.1 Participation in surveys (yearly average), national reports in
the Yearbook, presence at ICPEs, membership in the IBE
from 1934 to 1968 224
Fig. 15.1 Structure of revenue from 1929 to 1967 by percentage 240
xvii
xviii List of Figures
Fig. 16.1 Graphic representation of the mentions, during the general

discussion of the ICPE of 1955, on the financing of
education. Source: compiled from the database “presence
and interventions of states and their delegates at ICPEs
(1934-1958)”, design of the network produced with
Cytoscape software 255
Fig. 17.1 Analysis of the connotations in the discourses on Europe in
ICPE. The connotations of the discourses are represented
by typographical differences:
“neutral”; negative; positive; empathic277
List of Images
Image 1.1 The emblem of the IBE. A vignette drawn by children of

the Bakulé school in Prague, dedicated to street and to
handicapped children, famous for its children’s choir. It
appeared on countless publications, newsletters and
correspondence. (© AIJJR) 21
Image 2.1 The Institut Rousseau is the founder of the IBE (1925).
Created in 1912 by Édouard Claparède, this institute aimed
to train educators, teachers and researchers in all educational
disciplines, hence the plural in its name “School of
educational sciences”. As a precursor, it organised holiday
courses (here in 1916, on the measurement of intelligence).
(© AIJJR) 37
Image 2.2 A list of members for the honorary committee of the
IBE. In preparing the foundation of the IBE, the Institut
Rousseau requested support from well-known personalities,
who could reinforce its credibility. (© AIJJR) 40
Image 3.1 The constitutive document of the IBE. By this, the Institut
Rousseau defined its bodies and appointed the persons
responsible for its functioning. The signatories approved the
creation and became members of the steering committee;
among them Albert Einstein and Jean Piaget. (© AIJJR) 48
Image 3.2 Participants at the 1928 IBE summer school “How to make
the League of Nations known and develop the spirit of
international cooperation”. At these courses, organised until
1934, women—mostly teachers—were in the majority. They
were relegated to the shadows when the international
xix
xx List of Images
conferences and its state delegates replaced these summer

schools. (© IBE) 52
Image 3.3 The Palais Wilson. Headquarter of the League of Nations
until 1937, this former hotel on the shores of Lake of
Geneva got its name from Woodrow Wilson, leading
architect of the LoN. The Palais was the seat of the IBE
until 1984; until 1975, it was also the home of the Institut
Rousseau both collaborating intensively. (© AIJJR) 56
Image 4.1 Secretariat of the IBE in 1930. In the centre, Jean Piaget,
beside him Marie Butts, general secretary, and Pedro
Rosselló, deputy director, whose activities are extensively
analysed in this book. On the left, Rachel Gampert who was
secretary for more than twenty years, with important
responsibilities, among others, as translator, organiser of
conferences, responsible for the library and for the service
for war prisoners; behind her, Blanche Weber, responsible
for the section of child literature for 12 years. (© IBE) 65
Image 4.2 Letter from the Swiss Federal Policy Department to the
Director of the IBE, March 1934, informing of its
membership of the IBE. Indeed, the countries invited to
participate in the intergovernmental conferences found it
inconceivable that the host country, Switzerland, was not a
member of the IBE. This was the subject of much
negotiation, as Switzerland is a federal country, and most of
the educational responsibilities were previously the
responsibility of the cantons. (© IBE) 68
Image 5.1 Preparation of books for war prisoners. During the Second
World War, the IBE placed its energies at the service of a
humanitarian cause consistent with its functions: the Service
of Intellectual Assistance to Prisoners of War. A team of
eight secretaries and seventeen trainees worked for the
service, among them Rosine Maunoir, secretary of the IBE
(in the centre). (© IBE) 76
Image 5.2 Marie Butts (1870–1953), IBE’s secretary general from
1925 to 1947, flanked by Jean Piaget, director, and a
diplomat. In London during Second World War, she was
IBE’s ambassador for the preparation of the future
UNESCO. She was one of the first women to be awarded
the Doctorate Honoris Causa of the University of Geneva,
in 1948. (© IBE) 80
Image 6.1 IBE’s stand at the entrance to the exhibition of public
education (1943). On the left-hand side, article 2 of its
List of Images xxi
rules; on the right-hand side, a short description of its

activity for war prisoners: more than 300,000 books sent
out (in 1945, more than 600,000). (© IBE) 84
Image 6.2 Constitutive session of UNESCO in London, 1946. At the
very back, one can read the acronym “IBE” besides the
USA and the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration). Jean Piaget and a Swiss
colleague took part in this session, almost exclusively male.
(© IBE) 88
Image 7.1 Objects on Egypt’s exhibition stand. Egypt was a founder
country of the IBE and participated very actively in all IBE
activities during the whole period (1929–1968) (e.g. Egypt
sent delegates to all ICPEs). In these exhibitions, each
country highlighted national specificities, in order to allow
for a “visual” tour of the educational world. (© IBE) 96
Image 8.1 Announcement of the first general assembly of the LoN in
Geneva, November 1920. Forty-one countries participated,
including dominions of Great Britain. The picture
symbolises what later was called the “spirit of Geneva”:
international collaboration for peace. (© AIJJR) 115
Image 9.1 The IBE library in the Palais Wilson. The IBE collected
thousands of books, scientific and pedagogical journals, and
school books which could be consulted in the majestic
library of the Palais. From the beginning of its existence, the
IBE collected school books from all over the world in more
than a hundred languages, from 140 countries. The
collection consists of over 20,000 books, currently being
digitalised. (© IBE) 135
Image 9.2 Poster of the congress and exhibition of the World
Federation of Education Associations (WFEA) congress
held in 1929 in Geneva, co-organised with the IBE and
sponsored by local authorities. The slogan: “Education will
take the world away from war”. (© BGE) 141
Image 10.1 A collection of children’s literature books. The IBE
organised several surveys on children’s literature (Marie
Butts was herself an author). The last one was financed by
the Rockefeller Foundation in Latin America during World
War II. (© IBE) 152
Image 10.2 IBE publication on a central theme of new education. In the
first years under its new status of 1929, the IBE continued
to officially promote ideas of new education as shown by the
publication on self-government in school (another
xxii List of Images
publication was on team work in school). It contains

important contributions by Jean Piaget on educational
questions he would refer to in all his later pedagogical texts.
(© AIJJR) 155
Image 11.1 The second meeting of the IBE Council July 1931. It took
place in the famous Alabama room where the mediation
between the USA and Great Britain concerning the vessel
“Alabama” was signed (1872) and where the International
Red Cross was created (1864). (© IBE) 172
Image 11.2 The “third” ICPE 1934. It was the first international
conference to which all ministers of “sovereign” states in the
world were invited by the Swiss government on behalf of
the IBE. Thirty-eight countries sent delegates. In the far
background, Jean Piaget, Pedro Rosselló and Marie Butts,
and the two presidents Paul Lachenal (Switzerland) and
Marcel Nyns (Belgium). Two other women are entitled to
sit in this Conference, a secretary-typist (at the far right, this
must be Blanche Weber) and, in front of her and wearing a
hat, Dr Fannie Fern Andrews, secretary of the American
School Citizens League, part of the US delegation. (© IBE) 176
Image 11.3 A cabinet displaying the four main types of IBE
publications: result of surveys; minutes and
recommendations of the ICPEs; International Yearbook of
Education; Bulletin of the IBE. (© A. Bourquin; Érhise) 180
Image 12.1 Placement of the delegates for the 1964 ICPE. The
Executive Committee was in charge of adopting the
proposal for managing the arrangement of the states around
the tables to encourage exchanges between everyone,
without causing tension: quite a delicate question. (© IBE) 193
Image 12.2 A commemorative session: the 25th ICPE 1962. 224
delegates from ninety states were present (many countries
sent two or more delegates); fifteen international
organizations were also represented. The sessions were held
in the Palais Wilson. (© IBE) 196
Image 13.1 Pedro Rosselló, deputy director of the IBE, specialist in
comparative education, at the ICPE 1938, discussing with
Robert Dottrens, co-director of the Institut Rousseau and
responsible for the financial commission of the IBE for more
than twenty years. (© IBE) 202
Image 13.2 The IBE director Jean Piaget and the deputy director Pedro
Rosselló were friends also in their private life (with their
families) as this picture and many others show. (© AIJJR) 206
List of Images xxiii
Image IV.1 Caricature of Jean Piaget, director of the IBE, 1939. At this
moment, he was also professor at the universities of Geneva
and Lausanne, as written in the caption, and co-director of
the Institut Rousseau. At the age of 43, he was already well
known: his books were translated into several languages; he
was invited by many universities and received an honorary
doctorate from Harvard in 1936. (© AJP) 221
Image 14.1 New South Wales response to the survey concerning school
systems (1931). This survey, the first worldwide on public
education, was published in French in 1933 under the title
“The Organisation of Public Education in 53 Countries”:
an important step in comparative education. (© IBE) 225
Image 15.1 IBE revenues and expenditures in 1939. The incomes from
membership fees were not very high (64,460.- CHF), if one
takes into account that the fee was fixed at 10,000.- CHF:
there were sixteen state members and few of them paid their
duty in this period of crisis. The total income (142,577.-
CHF) nonetheless exceeded the expenditures (95,534.-
CHF). (© IBE) 235
Image 16.1 Draft for asking for correction of the intervention of the
Byelorussian delegate in the minutes of the IBE Council
1965. He complained that the question of translation into
Russian was not on the agenda of the IBE Council. Similar
letters can be found for Spanish, German and Arabic. Such
requests led to a survey by the IBE to determine which
languages should be given priority, and to ask states to
finance these translations. No one was willing to cover these
costs. The delegate addresses also the issue of borders on
the Oder and Neisse rivers, revanchist and militarist ideas
being promoted in school textbooks and exhibitions of the
Federal Republic of Germany which considered itself as the
only German state. (© IBE) 249
Image 17.1 Extract from the provisional minutes of the 1964
ICPE. The African Delegation appeals to the other
delegates to exclude colonial Portugal from the conference
referring to its cruel subjection of African peoples, the
ongoing struggle for liberation and UNESCO’s anticolonial
principles. (© IBE) 265
Image 18.1 A double page from a Spanish school atlas, 1961. This atlas
is part of the IBE’s school book collection. The question of
geography was discussed in the 1939 and 1949 ICPEs, with
strong stress on international comprehension and against
xxiv List of Images
racial prejudices, to be banned from textbooks. Obviously,

the double page of the atlas proceeds otherwise. (© IBE) 303
Image 19.1 Draft for the table of expenditures for education per
country, 1933. This table is part of the first survey discussed
in an ICPE (1934), published in French on the question of
budget savings in education. Note that the inquiry also
included colonies like India, Belgian Congo, Tunisia, etc.
(© IBE) 317
Image 20.1 Discussion during the 1952 ICPE on women in education.
In this first conference dedicated to the crucial issue of
access of women to education, the role and place of women
were meaningful for the first time. Women’s NGOs and
UNESCO were the instigators of this topic. (© IBE) 329
Image 21.1 Response of the Minister of Education of Saudi Arabia of 31
October 1959 to the IBE survey on the organisation of
special education for mentally deficient children. The
minister replied that this type of education required special
teacher skills which the country did not have at that time.
However, the Ministry planned to establish a department
for this type of education as soon as resources permitted.
The IBE had first investigated this problem in 1936. The
1959 survey focused on “educable” and “recoverable”
mental retardation. Seventy-one countries responded, and
79 participated in the 1960 Conference on the subject and
produced Recommendation N° 51, which aimed to improve
early diagnosis and “special education for the mentally
retarded” through appropriate structures, methods,
programmes and professionals. (© IBE) 343
Image 22.1 Natal’s answers to the IBE inquiry about the situation of
married women as teachers (1932). IBE organised
international surveys from 1927 on, in this same year
together with the IOL on child labour. The IBE invited as
many countries as possible to participate, including
provinces in federal states, and some colonies. (© IBE) 355
Image 1 Jean Piaget in 1976 at his 80th birthday. (©AJP) 381
List of Tables
Table 8.1 Educational and other associations corresponding with

the IBE 120
Table 11.1 Number and percentage of surveys and recommendations
discussed in the ICPEs in function of three main categories
(1934–1968)183
Table 15.1 The revenue of the IBE in Swiss francs from 1929 to 1967
by decade 239
xxv
CHAPTER 1
General Introduction
The whole world puts its hope in education. It needs an energetic, active,
enterprising educational organisation, able to penetrate everywhere, to put
everything to work, to make the most of everything. If we do not become
that organisation in a short time, another one, or others, will be created and
we will have no reason to exist. It would undoubtedly only be half bad if
these organisations presented the same guarantees of objectivity and of sci-
entific serenity as the IBE, which lives in the atmosphere of pure scientific
idealism of the J. J. Rousseau Institute, of political and religious neutrality
which is that of the Swiss Confederation, and the advanced international
spirit of Geneva. But this would not be the case, because it is impossible to
find these three conditions combined elsewhere. (Marie Butts, Secretary
General, Report to the Council of IBE, 21.10.1927, p. 2)1
At the end of the Great War, the whole world would confer on educa-
tion a redeeming mission. This was obvious to the Secretary General of
the International Bureau of Education (IBE), who defended with convic-
tion—here in 1927—the uniqueness of the Bureau that the Institut
Rousseau2 had just set up in Geneva (1925). According to Marie Butts,
only that particular Bureau could provide all the guarantees of credibility
1
AdF/A/1/2/36, AIJJR.
2
Also called École des sciences de l’éducation [School of sciences of education], a centre for
psychopedagogical research and documentation.
© The Author(s) 2024 1

R. Hofstetter, B. Schneuwly, The International Bureau of Education
(1925–1968), Global Histories of Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41308-7_1
2 R. HOFSTETTER AND B. SCHNEUWLY
and legitimacy required of such a “sanctuary”3: strict objectivity, scientific

serenity, political and religious neutrality, and an advanced interna-
tional spirit.
The energetic tone of the above quotation in fact reflects the drama
that was then unfolding, and which distressed Butts, who felt that if the
enterprise was not better supported and directed, it would soon go under.
A few months earlier, she had compared the IBE to “a budding giant”
whose “growth is a little frightening […] the time has come to make a
serious effort to provide our Bureau with the financial means that are
absolutely essential for its survival”.4 Less than two years after its creation
was proclaimed loud and clear to the world, the IBE was actually on the
verge of collapse.
However, we know in retrospect that the Bureau still exists today, and
this book is being published in the effervescent context of preparations for
its centenary, which will be celebrated in 2025: a longevity that few inter-
governmental organisations created during the inter-war period have been
able to achieve, with the notable exception of the International Labour
Organisation (ILO) and its Bureau, whom the IBE had taken as model.5
How, under what conditions and at what cost did this small institution of
1925, which effectively intended to merge its destiny with that of human-
ity, master the growth of this “budding giant” and deploy its potentiali-
ties? Have its universalist ambitions and flagship principles been maintained,
and have they been able to guide its activities and productions? Such issues
are among the main questions to which this book intends to provide
an answer.
This introduction begins with our point of departure, namely that the
IBE of the first part of the twentieth century can be seen as a matrix of
educational internationalism. If we widen our time frame here, it is the
resolutely universal and universalist ambition of the IBE that comes to the
fore, under the aegis of Piaget, when the institution becomes intergovern-
mental. Hence the title of this book, which also sets out the main theme.
We then briefly situate ourselves in the intense debate concerning the uni-
versal, and forge the indispensable tools for developing this critical
3
These are our words, but it refers to its builders’ idea of an IBE as a space preserved from
external interferences (skohlê in the meaning attributed to it by Bourdieu, 1997, pp. 24–26,
which also underlines its ambiguities).
4
Secretariat report for the meeting of the IBE Council, 30.5.1927, p. 3.
AdF/A/1/2/28, AIJJR.
5
For a recent overview retrospective, see Hidalgo-Weber and Lescaze (2020).
1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 3
sociogenesis of the IBE’s ambitions and achievements within its relational

network and the educational context of the twentieth century. We con-
tinue with a presentation of our problematic, a description of the
approaches and contents of each of the five parts, and a presentation of the
rich archival heritage on which our investigation is based. This introduc-
tion concludes with a few remarks designed to highlight contradictions
that are still present today, and which we will take up again in our conclu-
sion, since our research helps to shed new light on them.
The IBE: A Matrix for Educational Internationalism

Our investigation of the sociogenesis of the IBE in the dense web of inter-
national organisations (IGOs and INGOs) of the first half of the twentieth
century leads us to assert that this Bureau constituted a matrix of educa-
tional internationalism,6 with the universal in mind. Education is a nodal
facet of the “cultural internationalism” conceptualised by Iriye (1997)
which demonstrates the extent to which cultural phenomena—representa-
tions, values, knowledge, literature and the arts—play a central role in the
process of internationalisation, which intensified in the nineteenth cen-
tury, to become a veritable tidal wave during the first half of the twentieth
century (Herren, 2009; Sluga, 2013). The adjective “international” plus
the suffix “-ism” depicts this process as a cause to be embraced, an impera-
tive to be implemented, an objective to be achieved. In our view, it can be
interpreted as an internationalisation that becomes conscious of itself.7
Referring to works describing the sociogenesis of internationalism,8 we
use the term “educational internationalism”9 to designate the convictions
and achievements of a myriad of actors, individual and collective, private
6
A previous collective work (Hofstetter & Érhise, 2022), the only large-scale historical
research devoted to this organisation at the time, bears this title; given its importance for our
book, we specify its status in our foreword and refer to it specifically in the parts which build
on this knowledge base.
7
The term was in fact used by the very people who were working and pleading at the
beginning of the twentieth century for the construction of new international structures and
mentalities (or were resisting or challenging them) (Geyer & Paulmann, 2001; Herren, 2009).
8
We refer more specifically to: Clavin (2005), Laqua (2013), Reinisch (2016), Reinisch
and Brydan (2021), Saunier (2013) and Sluga and Clavin (2017).
9
See in particular our latest analysis: Droux and Hofstetter (2020), Hofstetter and Droux
(2022), Hofstetter and Schneuwly (2020), Matasci and Hofstetter (2022). Matasci and
Ruppen Coutaz (2023) have most recently used this concept to collectively examine the
circulation of knowledge during the Cold War.
and public, who were convinced of the need to apply the methods of inter-
national collaboration to the field of education in order to pacify the
world. The IBE would attempt to be the epicentre of this, by setting itself
up as an international rallying point.
During the immediate post-war decade, the IBE was indeed a signifi-
cant emblem of the mobilising power of civil society, as it strove to stand
out as a federating body for international associations that aspired to build
universal peace through education. Since 1929, set up as an independent
intergovernmental organisation, the first in the field of education, it had
been striving for the universality of its state partners, in order to improve
education systems with them. The internationalism of which it claimed to
be a part aimed to work on a global scale to universalise access to educa-
tion and to define universalisable teaching methods: an educational inter-
nationalism of which it can be considered to be the matrix. It would be a
matrix through the new modes of collaboration and exchange that the
Bureau established: the objectivity and neutrality its founders included in
the statutes of the Bureau from the outset constituted for them the tools
for international action on education systems, the preserve of nations. Its
partners thus profiled the IBE as an intergovernmental centre for com-
parative education, the first IO specializing in the description and com-
parative analysis of public school systems. It was in this capacity that from
1947 onwards the Bureau collaborated with UNESCO, for which it is
considered a precursor. It was also a matrix in defining, studying and dis-
cussing the causes on its agenda: addressing a wide range of problems
deemed crucial to the world’s educational progress, it endeavoured to
construct what its leaders called a charter of “world aspirations for public
education”. In its own way, it inaugurated what we now call the global
education agenda.10
An Increasingly Universal Orientation

As we have said, the common thread running through this book is the
IBE’s universal ambition. Perceived and declared right from its founda-
tion (1925), this became its primary aim once it was elevated to the status
of an intergovernmental organization. The collaboration with UNESCO,
10
Here we take up the notion of “globalization,” historicised and theorised alongside the
ones of “borrowing” and “lending”, by Steiner-Khamsi (2004) later by Steiner-Khamsi and
Waldow (2012).
inaugurated in the early days of the institution, was intended to bring it

closer to this goal.
Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, the number and profile of the
countries participating in the IBE’s activities became more diversified to
include most parts of the globe, thus bringing it closer to the ideal of uni-
versality. What interests us in this context is to understand how these part-
ners, brought together for the “supreme good of childhood”, which was
supposed to free them from all frontiers and discord, positioned them-
selves in relation to each other when they were confronted with particu-
larly sensitive problems. We examine especially the impact of the Cold War
and of decolonisation in terms of the universalist ideals in force, also
appropriated by newly independent countries to make their own voices
heard. We focus here on the forty years during which Jean Piaget was the
director (1929–1968) and the driving force behind the International
Conferences on Public Education (ICPEs), which were organised annu-
ally in order to apply the methods of international collaboration to the
field of education. We examine how Piaget drew on his universalist theo-
ries of child development and the construction of intelligence as guide-
lines for the pedagogical surveys and positions of the IBE and how, under
his leadership, the IBE positioned itself axiologically.11 We also highlight
how, together with Rosselló (Deputy Director), Piaget conceptualised the
modus operandi of the ICPEs, which were designed to allow “the ascen-
sion from the individual to the universal” as well as the way in which he
assumed his role as a diplomat of educational internationalism, including
during the critical phases of the exacerbation of nationalisms and, later,
those of the geopolitical reconfigurations of the world.
11
Chapman (1988), Ducret (1984), Gruber and Vonèche (1993) remain the best intro-
duction to Piaget’s work. Ratcliff (2011) allows us to know Piaget’s personality in his rela-
tionships with others, which is essential to understand his action at the IBE, but also his
description of the “laboratory of simplicity” (2006), which echoes Burman’s (2012) demon-
stration that Piaget’s scientific work, far from being the product of a “great man”, is the
product of a “factory”, a “factory” of many workers that he directs as a “boss”: an image that
fits perfectly with his role at the IBE (see also Ratcliff & Burman, 2017). As for Kohler
(2009), his advantage is that he has worked on the impressive archival sources of the IBE
(and not the Institut Rousseau, on which he adds nothing new); but he deploys his energy
surprisingly in pointing out the contradictions in Piaget’s involvement with the IBE, with-
out, in our view, sufficiently contextualising what was at stake at the time for the IBE and all
the individual and collective players at work in the creation of these new international bodies
of the time. The challenge was to avoid any teleological interpretation of the tools they were
trying to build step by step to achieve their ends, albeit without the hoped-for success.
Throughout the twentieth century, the orientation of the IBE towards

the universal became thus more explicit and served as a flag-bearer for its
designers. This is particularly evident in the quest for universality of gov-
ernmental actors who contributed to the enterprise, that is, ministries of
education around the world. It can also be seen in the development of a
modus operandi that was supposed to respect the principles of reciprocity
and decentralisation in order to guarantee equitable exchanges which,
from the IBE’s perspective, was a condition for the construction of the
universal. It was simultaneously reflected in the desire to define universal-
isable pedagogical principles and to promote universal access to education.
It is also significant that it was to Piaget, Director of the IBE and Interim
Director of the UNESCO education department, that this UN agency
entrusted the task of commenting on Article 26 of the “Universal
Declaration of Human Rights”, dedicated to the right to education.12
Universal/Universality: Conceptual Tools

for an Investigation
The IBE was thereby part of the universalist discourse13 of the time which
concerned both the epistemic sphere and its potential for knowledge, and
the ethical sphere linked to the question of values, such as peace, justice,
12
By the way, Piaget’s paper, “Le droit à l’éducation dans le monde actuel” [The right to
education in the modern world], inaugurated the “Human Rights” Collection, published by
UNESCO (1949; 1951 in English).
13
Today, the word “universalism” is often used to refer to the whole of these discourses.
This is a relatively recent term (mid-nineteenth century), applied first and foremost to the
theological field. Statistics show that its use has become more frequent from the 1980s
onwards, probably in connection with the questioning of the “universal” by post-colonial
movements and cultural studies, against which others defend “universalism”. It is thus a
“meta-category” that allows for the analysis of social currents linked to universals or for the
constitution of such movements under the banner of universalism (e.g. Policar, 2021; Wolff,
2019; for an English presentation of the term see Ingram 2014). Balibar seems to us to
perfectly situate the meaning of universalism from a historical point of view and to relativise
the use of the term: It is more useful “to attempt to analyses the differends of universalisms as
the very modality in which the historicity of the universal, or its constitutive equivocity, is
given” (2020, p. 56), the most massive example of these “differends” being the competing
universalisms of monotheisms (one may refer here to Jasper’s idea of an axial period when
monotheisms were invented; Ingram 2014). We ourselves will only use universalism as an
analytical category, especially as it was hardly used by IBE spokespersons, who clearly
favoured universal, universality, sometimes universalist and exceptionally universalisation,
universalisable.
health and freedom, to mention just a few of the IO’s flagship ideals at the
time. Since the IBE’s quest for legitimacy in the dense network of other
bodies with the same universal aims is examined here in the light of its
universalist ambitions, we will briefly situate ourselves in recent historiog-
raphy on this subject. These universalist discourses have been the subject
of criticism in major political debates, to the extent that some have spoken
of a “new quarrel”.14 This will allow us to introduce some concepts that
will guide us in our investigations.
Various analyses have shown that, in addition to the just and noble
causes they are supposed to promote, claims to universality have also
turned out to be weapons of oppression and discrimination of peoples,
serving even as a pretext for exploitation and imperialist domination under
the guise of a civilising mission that justified colonialism.15 This overarch-
ing universalism (Merleau-Ponty, 1960, p. 75)—of which human rights
would constitute a modality—was also analysed by some as the result of a
narrative, a product of the dominant historicism (Chakrabarty, 2009),
which made Europe the place where the benefits of human progress had
emerged and were erected as universal: European exceptionalism would
embody the universalism that the rest of the world was supposed to follow
(Diagne, 2018, p. 71), in other words what Bourdieu (1992) once called
the “imperialism of the universal”.
However, the very notion of the universal is rarely questioned on its
merits, and the interpretations that critics provide of it diverge. Indeed,
the universal is an “essentially contested” notion.16 This manifests itself in
the antinomies that appear in the discussions devoted to it. Balibar
14
Somsen (2008) presents a history of universalism in science. For a critique of epistemic
universality and its possible links with power relations, particularly in the social sciences, see
Wallerstein (2006). We shall see that this vision of the possibility of separating the scientific,
or as it was often said, the “technical” and the political, would constitute an essential prob-
lem in the evolution of the IBE.
15
See notably: Barth and Osterhammel (2005), Barth and Hobson (2020), Harrison
(2019), Matasci et al. (2020), Petitjean (2005), Pomeranz (2005) and Weitz (2008). Some
authors claim that the very essence of these rights would involve oppression: “‘Human
rights’ is not only about having or claiming a right or a set of rights; it is also about righting
wrongs, about being the dispenser of these rights. The idea of human rights [carries within
itself the idea that] the fittest must shoulder the burden of righting the wrongs of the unfit”
(Spivak, 2004, p. 523).
16
We are referring to a lecture by Balibar (2021). He takes up Gallie’s (1956) idea of
“essentially contested concepts”, drawing more directly on Capdevila (2004) who analyses
the notion of ideology.
identifies and explores three of them which will serve as a compass in our
analysis of the IBE.17 The most well-known is that between the vertical or
overarching universal, on the one hand, and the lateral universal enriched
by experience of the other. The second one is between the extensive uni-
versal which aims first to expand itself and the intensive universal which
operates by the force of principle or emulation. The third between the
abstract universal which functions by subtracting particularities (Kant’s
categorical imperative or, essentially, human rights) and the concrete uni-
versal with the differences or particularities becoming components of the
universal, in the sense of a totality. Any discussion of the concept of uni-
versal would lead to one positioning oneself in the contradictory field
described by these paradoxes.
The discussion around these antinomies itself demonstrates that it is
not so much a question of abandoning the concept of the universal in
favour of particularism,18 as of enriching it according to socio-historical
evolutions. Diagne writes in particular:
The plural that Bandung celebrates is not directed against the universal. On
the contrary, it is its promise. That of a universal which is not an imperial
imposition, but the inscription of the plural of the world on a common
horizon. (2021, p. 150)19
Critical approaches assert the possibility of the construction of another

type of universal, which is currently the subject of much debate.20 We have
identified two common characteristics which will also guide our thinking
on the IBE’s history.21 First, the universal is defined as the product of a
ceaseless construction, as a process through which particularities,
Balibar (2020) and the lecture just mentioned.

17
Admittedly, there are positions that are clearly along these lines, particularly in the so-
18
called decolonial movement; for a critical presentation of these movements, see, for example,
Amselle (2011) and Bayart (2010).
19
As is known, “Bandung” was a conference of twenty-nine African and Asian countries
held in April 1955 at which these countries decided to fight colonialism together and to stay
out of great power rivalries; see a more detailed note in Chap. 17.
20
Besides “lateral universalism”, they are called “universal universalism” (Wallerstein,
2006), “universal supplement” (an oxymoron by Balibar, 2020), “reiterative universalism”
(Walzer, 1990), “universalism as a horizon” (Laclau, 1996), “strategic universalism” (Gilroy,
2000), a “singular universality” (Badiou, 1998).
21
For this general characterisation, we rely in particular on Diagne (2014), himself inspired
by the work of Balibar.
differences and nuances can be incorporated into the universal itself. To

put it another way: what is universal is not the product of an abstract
essence, but is derived from what is tirelessly constructed through the
circulation of practices, knowledge, communication and understanding of
particularities. Second, this implies forms of interaction that are discursive
and linked to language. In this context, two approaches are adopted: that
of dialogue-deliberation, based on argumentation and reasoning, an ideal
that often refers to Habermas (see in particular 1983); and that of transla-
tion, a necessity arising from the fact that differences are fixed in human-
ity’s multiplicity of languages and cultures, which in fact constitute a
“multiversum” and which make possible mutual appropriation and trans-
formation.22 It seems to us that it is possible to link these approaches to
the concept of “multiversum” that Bloch once proposed in his critique of
the unilateral notion of progress, of which overarching universalism is one
of the most obvious incarnations:
The notion of progress does not tolerate “cultural circles” in which time is
nailed to space in a reactionary manner but, instead of uniqueness, it needs
a broad, elastic and fully dynamic multiversum, a permanent and often
entangled counterpoint of historical voices. Thus, in order to do justice to
the immense extra-European material, it is no longer possible to work in a
unilinear way, no longer without bulges in the series, no longer without a
new, complicated temporal multiplicity. (Bloch, 1956/1970, p. 38 [our
translation])
The universal as a process of construction thus implies a multiversum.
Our Theme: The Universal and the IBE—Ambitions,

Limits and Contradictions
We have made the heuristic choice of taking the “essentially contested”
concept of “universal” and its derivatives “universality, universalisability,
universalising”, as an analytical thread, since, as we stated above, it was
consubstantial to the discourse and intentions of those contemporary
22
This idea appears in the texts of Diagne, Amselle, Policar, Butler quoted above, all stress-
ing that translation cannot ignore, on the one hand, questions of dominance and, on the
other hand, the transformation brought about by translation, which makes the translated and
translating languages evolve (Butler, 2000, p. 38). It is Balibar who establishes the link with
the “multiversum” (2020, p. 93).
actors themselves,23 and with the IBE Secretariat in the first place, includ-
ing its director, Piaget. In this regard, we will examine how the IBE posi-
tioned itself, in its daily functioning, when faced with different possible
manifestations of the universal: to take up the antinomies pointed out,
between the vertical universal versus the lateral, abstract versus concrete,
extensive versus intensive. More specifically, how did the IBE relate to the
overarching universalism that functioned as the dominant ideology with
its corollary of a civilising mission? To what extent did it succeed in envis-
aging other modalities of constructing the universal that could come close
to the conceptions being discussed and that are well summarised by the
term multiversum? Can we identify any specific features of the role, man-
date and positioning of the IBE in the dense network of international
bodies making education their focus? In particular, we will explore the
following questions: What role did the figure of Piaget and his psychoped-
agogical theory play in this construction, and how did he, together with
his deputy director, the comparatist Pedro Rosselló, and the staff of the
IBE, develop tools capable of meeting (or failing to meet) this universalist
challenge? Would the application of the IBE’s principles of neutrality and
objectivity, if at all effective, enable it to avoid the pitfalls identified, taking
it for granted that they form the basis of exchanges between protagonists
with contrasting points of view? To what extent did the reconfigurations
of the surrounding world, in particular the Cold War and above all the
wave of decolonisation in the 1950s and 1960s, call into question the
foundations of the IBE and require adjustments to the way it operated?
What were the main thrusts of the “global education aspirations” con-
cerning universal access to education and the universalisable principles
developed by the IBE? Given its status as a matrix, might the IBE have
been at the forefront of the development of a series of educational princi-
ples which would have contributed today to the establishment of an edu-
cational dogma by international education agencies? In fact, let us dare to
go one step further: was it not precisely through its principles that the
Bureau ran the risk of a vertical universalism: by not taking a position,
ignoring, or even supporting practices and discourses that denied the
23
One could say that we analyse one dimension of “the universal as reality”, to take again
a formula of Balibar who subsumes there the irreversible process of the appearance “of an
effective interdependence between the elements or units of which one can form what we call
the world” (1997, p. 422).
universal; by generalising to humanity as a whole24 objective results that

might be particular and only valid in a specific context?
The universal, claimed by the IBE itself, was thus systematically sub-
jected to questioning. It is thus a matter of observing the different mani-
festations that this notion could take in the concrete reality of daily action
that unfolds in contexts marked by relationships of domination, contradic-
tory positions, and liberation movements.
In answering these questions, the book makes its own contribution to
the historiography of global governance in education, which has been
developing over the last few years to complement the history of interna-
tional organisations (IOs).25 This fascinating research will now be enriched
by the history of the IBE, considered at the time to be a predecessor of
UNESCO: the IBE, the first intergovernmental organisation in education,
a “specialised second-level institution” affiliated to UNESCO under the
aegis of a world-renowned psychologist, Piaget, who played a significant
role on UNESCO’s Executive Committee and as interim director of the
organisation’s education department.
Structure of the Book: Five Complementary

Points of View
We thus see the IBE as a privileged observatory for identifying the condi-
tions and convictions that led the designers of this small IO to take on the
mission of contributing to the universalisation of access to education, by
constructing pedagogical methods deemed universalisable, a universality
24
Here we find a contradiction inherent in the claim of the “apolitism” of international
organisations that bring governments together. Processes of “depoliticisation” have charac-
terised international organisations since the end of the nineteenth century (Louis &
Maertens, 2021; see also Petiteville, 2017). Scientific objectivity manifested as expertise or
neutrality, but also the claim to a monopoly in a given field seem admittedly necessary to
ensure the functioning of specialised international institutions such as in labour, health or, as
in our case, education, but “politics strikes back” (p. 186): their contents are indeed deeply
political. The IBE adopts these same general principles. The question arises as to whether the
particular approaches it applies to “depoliticise” its action in its quest for the universal and
universality distinguish it from other intergovernmental organisations.
25
See, among others, Bürgi (2017), Elfert and Ydesen (2023) and Ydesen (2019); see also
the earlier work of Maurel (2006, 2010), and Archibald (1993); for the IIIC, another organ-
isation working in the field of education, Renoliet (1999), and more recently Riondet
(2020). The overview of current IOs proposed by Niemann (2022) gives yet another view
of the importance of these organisations and therefore of their history.
that would be guaranteed by associating with the universality of the

world’s educational authorities. Our aim is to highlight their ambitions
and achievements, the struggles and disputes that punctuated their daily
lives, the contradictions they encountered and the ways in which they
strove to overcome them in order to ensure the credibility and efficiency
of their institution and the causes they espoused.
To do this, we have adopted five complementary points of view which
have structured our work, varying the scales and focal points of the analysis.
A processual analysis of the building and restructuring of the IBE in its
context is carried out in Part I of this book. We examine how the small
Institut Rousseau mobilised to create the IBE (1925), transforming it into
an intergovernmental education agency (1929), which joined forces with
UNESCO (1947) in order to concretise what the UN body now calls the
“world education agenda”.
The management of its relational system, oriented by a principle of
universality, was at the heart of the concerns of the IBE’s designers and
serves as a common thread in our analysis of the different regimes that
were negotiated, experimented with, reorganised and institutionalised. At
the same time, we highlight the multiple temporalities of this construc-
tion, with each of the reconfigurations and statutory decisions accompa-
nying, supporting and stabilising the daily orientations and practices,
which were constantly changing in order to guarantee the viability and
legitimacy of the institution in the face of institutional and geopolitical
changes in the surrounding world.
Here we diversify the scales of analysis, in order to understand what was
lived and done on a day-to-day basis in the Bureau’s small office, what was
stated and negotiated in official meetings, and what was printed and circu-
lated between bodies and beyond institutional and national borders. This
also allows us to identify the possible discrepancies between global aspira-
tions for perpetual peace and the objective conditions of exhausting expe-
riences, where the daily work at the IBE had as its limited horizon a tiny
office in which piles of complex files were managed by a small core of
energetic but overworked internationalists.
How did the designers and spokespersons of the IBE manage to hold
the reins of this “giant” whose growth both alarmed and excited them?
What tools and mechanisms did they use to implement their ambitious
programme? Under what conditions did they manage to overcome the
turmoil of the war, to gain recognition from the new “World Authority for
Education” that was UNESCO, and then to defy the antagonisms of the
Cold War and the multiplicity of international institutions that arrogated

prerogatives in the field of education and made it a vector of development?
Part II is complementary: it adopts the point of view of a social and
conceptual (micro-) history in order to elucidate the principles and axio-
logical positions that underpinned the commitment of the IBE’s project
leaders. We try to understand where the members of the IBE Secretariat –
including its directors – and the main bodies and personalities that defined
its orientations were positioned and what they aimed to achieve.
The challenge is to determine how these actors, whose individual and
collective portraits are drawn here, handled their rigorously scientific pos-
tures and their resolutely reformist commitments, making themselves also
the standard-bearers of the new education and active methods; how they
tried to position themselves in the face of the new intergovernmental insti-
tutions which, from one post-war period to the next, coveted childhood
and education in order to manage the future of the planet. It is these
competitions and rivalries—the sometimes disconcerting ostracism that
ensued—but also the internal dissensions and embarrassing suspicions
which we are interested in identifying in order to determine how these
apparent obstacles became a springboard for action, leading the IBE
spokespersons to constantly clarify their position.
We attempt here to understand the content and to identify possible
developments that followed, in order to highlight what, in the IBE’s prin-
ciples of action, persisted over the decades or was reconfigured in order to
avoid ambiguities, resistance and contradictions. How were the individual
and collective convictions, ideological positions and value systems of IBE
leaders expressed and how did they evolve in a world where education
became the object of intergovernmental rivalries and cultural antagonisms
between nations and empires? What were the theoretical underpinnings
developed by the members of the IBE Secretariat—Piaget in particular—
to define the IBE’s central axiom: the “ascent from the individual to the
universal”? This dialectic between the differential and the universal—
between the abstract and the concrete universal one might also say—gives
rise to reflection, and here it leads once more to a clarification of the IBE’s
positioning, in concertation with its partners.
The first two parts of the book contextualise the sociogenesis of the
IBE and its axiological principles, going back to the beginning of the
twentieth century and covering, downstream, the last years during which
the institution remained independent. They set the institutional and con-
ceptual scene of the IBE in its relational network. The next three parts
focus on the forty years of the IBE under the stewardship of Piaget and
more particularly on the period when the “IBE spirit” and its modus ope-
randi were consolidated around the annual International Conferences on
Public Education (ICPEs), namely between 1934 and 1968. The last
period, the 1960s, can be considered as its climax marked by a modus
operandi that its very success made inoperative. This is what we will show.
Part III focuses on the ICPEs which were the trademark of the IBE
since 1934; UNESCO was associated with the organisation of these since
1947, demonstrating the importance attached to these conferences at the
time. How could this new “intergovernmental world forum for
education”26 be institutionalised by bringing together nation states jealous
of their educational prerogatives? But conversely, how could an organisa-
tion claim to be completely politically neutral and strictly scientific, when
its main state partners aspired to have their national school policies
endorsed? In this part, we propose to define the conceptual and pragmatic
contours of the “modus operandi” of the aforementioned conferences,
conceived jointly by the two heads of the IBE, Piaget and his deputy direc-
tor Rosselló, by dissecting their scenography, which was also evolving, as
well as the theorisation which formed the basis of it. We are deepening a
hypothesis, previously outlined (Hofstetter & Schneuwly, 2023), namely
that it might be possible to find its sociogenesis by going back to the first
Piagetian theorisations concerning the development and construction of
the child’s intelligence. Could the principles of decentring and reciprocity
not be transposed from the pedagogical sphere to the intergovernmental
scene? This seems to be the mainspring of Piaget’s investment in the IBE
and its ICPEs. With the comparatist Rosselló, the institution was built as
they went along, its creation being original in that it contributed to the
foundation of comparative education, both as an academic discipline and
as a scientific method. It was hoped that international comparative surveys
would provide the data to be documented and then guide what they call
the “global march of education”, drawing on local and national experi-
ences to collectively define recommendations for improving education
worldwide. These recommendations would be all the more binding since
they would be collegially defined and freely agreed upon and reappropri-
ated: they would function both as extensive universals, aimed at the whole
world, as well as intensive universals, with emulation often invoked as a
mechanism for transformation.
26
Where we do not give specific references to quotations, as here, it is because the expres-
sions quoted are scattered throughout the speeches and documents.
A utopia? A fiction? But how could such a modus operandi be put for-
ward, when the world was on fire, when the intergovernmental institu-
tions of the first half of the twentieth century were mostly doomed to
disappear, to be replaced by the powerful United Nations and its numer-
ous specialized organisations; and when in education its UNESCO takes a
central place, then, more and more, economic organisations like OECD
and World Bank investing which favour resolutely more constraining
mechanisms of governance?
Changing scale, in Part IV we move on to analyse the relationships that
the IBE maintained with different countries and educational authorities
around the world to encourage them to participate in its activities and to
manage them collectively. We analyse how the IBE implemented its theoreti-
cal principles of action and its modus operandi on a day-to-day basis. The
transnational perspective is of particular importance here, as is the contribu-
tion of political science in identifying the contrasting forms of the relation-
ship between politics and education in a self-proclaimed neutral and
independent intergovernmental body. While the IBE claimed to be universal,
not only in numerical terms but also in terms of equity of treatment and rela-
tions with its state partners, we are interested here in questioning the likely
obstacles encountered, the possible compromises accepted, the inevitable
differentiations established, and the transformations chosen or undergone
to, depending on the interlocutors as well as on geopolitical developments.
We ask ourselves if the very aim of universality does not potentially con-
tain its own contradictions: was the postulated impartiality tenable in the face
of the rise of ideologies that were contrary to the democratic principles
defended by the IBE and which, moreover, interfered in its sphere? Was it
still tenable when the voices and demands of long-oppressed peoples erupted
and firmly raised the question of the political basis of education, as revealed
by the expansionist civilising arguments carried by the myth of development
imposed by the Western empires? How did global political developments—
authoritarianism, the Cold War, the emancipation of colonies—interfere
with the goal of universality? Did these developments collide with the univer-
sal principles of action on which the IBE was based, thereby making it diffi-
cult to situate oneself between vertical and lateral universality?
This part thus allows us to reflect further on the way in which represen-
tatives of education on the one hand and politics on the other27 negotiated
27
Education is represented here by the IBE’s spokespersons and the experts/partners who
support them, while politics is embodied by the ministerial delegates and the states that they
represent during the activities set up by the IBE. The boundaries between these two spheres
are in fact porous (Fehrat, 2021; Hofstetter & Brylinski, 2023; Kott, 2008; Littoz-
Monnet, 2017).
their reciprocal relations. In doing so, we will try to identify how the IBE
partners played the game—or not—of depoliticising intergovernmental
consultations on education; simultaneously we will try to see how socially
relevant educational issues were exposed to controversies and divisions
influenced by the geopolitical context.
In Part V, we focus on the causes defended by IBE partners, and
more specifically on the general guidelines and principles that they
believed could be universalised through their ICPEs. Through content
analysis of the thematic surveys, the results and discussions of which
were published in large volumes leading to recommendations that were
disseminated worldwide, the aim is to identify which causes were
favoured and in what form they were translated into recommendations
of universal value. This involves closely observing the evolution of the
themes and positions of the IBE’s protagonists in international surveys
and forums, placing them in the contexts in which they were voiced.
Embracing the systematic analysis of the sixty-five surveys28 which led to
the nineteen ICPEs, set up between 1934 and 1968 (jointly with
UNESCO from 1947 onwards), we are thus able to present the major
strengths of the causes favoured by the IBE: first and foremost, universal
access to the fullest possible education in order to preserve peace and
international understanding. This presupposes both a broad school cul-
ture and qualified and recognised teachers.
We have chosen to examine the causes officially defined by the IBE’s
bodies and partners, in the order of our presentation: school content and
culture, teacher training and working conditions, equal access to school-
ing and improvement of education systems. However, at the same time,
we have also decided to take on board the cross-cutting issues that
imposed themselves through their acuteness and which brought the pro-
tagonists face to face with important contradictions: beyond the beauti-
ful and good causes supposedly common to all the world’s educational
authorities, how were gender and race discrimination, as well as the
asymmetries between the countries of the North and the South, and
between the West and the East, dealt with—stated, denounced, masked
or silenced?
28
Occasionally, we have included surveys that were carried out earlier or that did not result
in an ICPE. In Appendix B we present the surveys discussed in the ICPEs.
Will our analysis allow us to better understand how likely it would be

that the targeted abstract and general universal would run into concrete
contradictions due to the fact, perhaps, that it does not take sufficiently
into account the historically created conditions in which the principles
must be realized?29 This is what we are aiming at.
Besides this main text, we offer the reader two other ways to know parts
of the IBE’s history. Short inserts,30 distributed throughout the book,
shed some light on particular aspects of the context in which it emerged
and worked, or they focus, as through a magnifying glass, on details of its
functioning and reasoning. Images and their captions illustrate each chap-
ter: they can be read as a form of visual history of the IBE through photo-
graphs but also copies of texts and manuscripts whose significance is
explained in the short texts that accompany them.
Exploiting Exceptional Documentary Heritage

Establishing the history of the IBE first of all required the identification of
the sources that make it possible to gain intimate knowledge of its evolu-
tion and the analytical and critical interpretation that is then proposed.31
Our investigations were inaugurated at the Fondation Archives Institut
J.-J. Rousseau, the institute that created the “first” IBE as a corporate
association (1925–1929). They led us to the IBE’s Documentation
Centre, which still houses the Bureau’s archival heritage in Geneva. This
archive is particularly rich. Indeed, the concern for documentation—
which is rooted in the IBE’s founders’ internationalist and encyclopaedic,
pacifist and universalist convictions—led them, from the dawn of the
twentieth century, to gather all the knowledge available in the world on
childhood and education: to locate, classify, discuss, enrich and make it
29
However, we shall confine ourselves here to the speeches made by the protagonists of
the undertaking. Other studies have tried to understand the impact of the IBE’s recommen-
dations on the school policies of the different partner countries by examining how they use
this body to legitimize certain orientations on their national territories; In this respect, see
Relations Internationales, 2020, N°183, in particular the articles by Bajomi (2020) on
Hungary and Robert (2020) on France; Loureiro (forthcoming) on Latin America, and the
project initiated by Matasci and Hofstetter (2022) on Brazil, Cameroon, Turkey and
Vietnam.
30
Three of them were written by our collaborator Émeline Brylinski, whom we thank
warmly here.
31
For the period from 1925 to 1952, documentary resources are partially the same as those
used by Érhise in the 2022 volume; so we take over main elements relating to their descrip-
tion from Hofstetter and Droux (2022, pp. 36–39).
accessible to all, convinced as they were that universal access to knowledge

and culture is a prerequisite for peace in the world. This documentary
frenzy and this heritage culture were also useful for them to achieve and
then establish their legitimacy, in order to prove their originality and their
expertise and also to be part of history, to make history and to embody it.
Thus, in the voluminous archive preserved by the IBE32 we scoured the
following resources to conduct our research: a wealth of books, journals,
educational collections, and reports—in a variety of languages—that the
IBE had acquired to document the evolution of education around the
world; a host of responses to IBE surveys on educational reform from
around the world documenting the critical issues that its leaders and part-
ners sought to address; innumerable fact sheets prepared and translated
for and by the International Conferences on Public Education, ICPEs,
which were one of the original features of the IBE; and finally, an infinite
variety of bibliographies, newsletters, and analytical summaries, with a
view to guiding this global march.33
We did not confine ourselves to official speeches alone, but we examined
and cross-referenced a variety of sources—diaries, reports and minutes, per-
sonal correspondence, iconographic documents—with a view to capturing
the effervescence of this internationalism, which was youthful in terms of
both its novelty and its target population: in the final analysis, the new gen-
erations were the reference horizon for their activities. This diversity of
sources has enabled us to grasp what was thought and played out on a daily
basis within the IBE secretariat; to follow, day after day, the reflections and
negotiations of the individuals and committees that created and reconfig-
ured the institution over the decades. This has also allowed us to identify
“from below”, right down to the work table of the secretaries and their
directors, how the IBE experimented with any mechanism before it was
32
The IBE has just completed the digitisation of its manuscript archives (1925–1968, i.e.
the equivalent of forty linear metres), which has greatly facilitated our work since 2021.
While the collection of manuals is now partially accessible on the web, the same cannot be
said of the other published sources, in particular all those that precede, accompany and fol-
low on from the ICPEs, that is, tens of thousands of pages, which we had to search manually.
This was particularly tedious for this volume, since we integrated, in addition to the sources
already considered for the collective book Hofstetter and Érhise (2022), all the IBE publica-
tions from 1953 to 1969.
33
We have systematically referred to existing English translations, including the minutes of
the ICPEs since 1947 and those of the Joint Commission meetings. When these translations
were not complete or even wrong, we corrected them, noting this in the reference as “revised
translation,” sometimes with a comment on possible ideological meanings of the translation
made with the support and under the supervision of UNESCO.
formalised, reproducing its constructivist approach to education and science

in many of its other activities, even administrative and diplomatic ones.
We have adopted the same methodological considerations as Kott
(2021, p. 11), who stresses the “bulwark [that the official discourse may
constitute] that hides from the outside world the contradictions that work”
in the IOs, inviting us to carefully study the internal non-promotional doc-
uments in order to gain access to the multiplicity of divergent interests and
discordant voices of which these agencies are made. We have tried to
uncover the differences of opinion within the institution itself, but also the
agreements that were reached, however difficult to reach, to express them-
selves with a unanimous voice when the members of the IBE had to repre-
sent their institution on official stages. As contemporaries did, we have
used the singular in these cases, personifying in a sense the IBE, especially
since the prosopographical analysis has shown that its main representatives
recognise themselves in similar profiles, which are certainly the origin of
their common investment in this enterprise and its causes.
It was at the majestic desk once occupied by Piaget when he was head
of the IBE that we ourselves read the personal letters, as incisive as they
were diplomatic, from the directors Pierre Bovet and then Piaget and
Rosselló to their colleagues or competitors; the crisp and unvarnished
reports of Secretary General Butts, as she rubbed shoulders with the so-
called Peacemakers and Leaders of the World in the countless committees,
commissions and congresses she attended, or as she drank tea and dis-
cussed strategy with their ingenious and often influential secretaries in the
twilight following those ceremonial occasions.
Obviously, basing oneself on the archives of an institution that sees itself
as the epicentre requires a certain amount of distance in order to avoid taking
at face value the discourse that it has about itself. In doing so, it is necessary
to contrast this discourse with that of other bodies, in order to better assess
its audience; an audience that is certainly very small if we stick to the sources
collected in the institutions that the IBE focused on: The International
Labour Office (ILO), the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation
(IIIC) and the other organs of the Organisation of Intellectual Cooperation
(OIC), the Liaison committee of the major international associations, and of
course the League of Nations (LoN) and its bodies, then UNESCO and
even the UN. Among the associations belonging to the IBE’s militant rela-
tional network, we have noted in particular the International Congress of
Moral Education (ICEM), the New Education Fellowship (NEF), the
teacher association of French speaking Switzerland the Société pédagogique
romande (SPR), and the World Federation of Education Associations
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
He and Miles dined—then Pembroke, over the wine, opened the
Colonel’s billet. It was brief.
“My Dear Boy,—Olivia and I are coming to
Washington to spend the winter. I have not been to the
cursed town since the winter before the war, when
Wigfall was in the Senate, and Floyd was Secretary of
War. John B. Floyd was one of the greatest men the
State of Virginia ever produced. Now, I want to go to a
decent tavern—but Olivia, who is a girl of spirit, won’t
do it. She insists on having a furnished house, and I’ve
engaged one through an agent. Don’t suppose it will
suit, but Olivia swears it will. We’ll be up in the course
of a week or two, and will let you know. Damme if I
expect to find a gentleman in public life—always
excepting yourself, my dear boy. I inclose you our
address. Olivia desires her regards to you and her
particular love to Miles, also mine.
“Sincerely, your friend,
“Th. Berkeley.”
“That’s pleasant news,” said Miles.
“Very pleasant,” replied Pembroke, without smiling in the least.
He was glad to see the Colonel, but he was still sore about Olivia.
Whenever he had been at home, the same friendly intercourse had
gone on as before—but there was always an invisible restraint
between them. Colonel Berkeley had noticed it, and at last ventured
to question Olivia about it—when that young woman had turned on
her father and cowed him by a look of her eye. There were some
liberties the Colonel could not take with his daughter.
Promptly, the Colonel and Olivia arrived.
The house, which was after the conventional pattern of the
Washington furnished house of those days, struck a chill to Colonel
Berkeley’s heart.
“My love,” he said, disconsolately, looking at the dull grates in the
two square drawing-rooms, “I’m afraid I’ll lose all my domestic virtues
around this miserable travesty of a hearth.”
“Just wait, papa,” answered Olivia, with one of her encouraging
smiles.
“I knew how it would be. Wait until some of those big boxes are
unpacked that you swore so about.”
When the boxes were unpacked, they were found to contain the
old fashioned brass andirons and fenders that had shone upon the
cheerful hearths at Isleham for many years. Olivia in a trice, had the
grates out and managed to have a wood fire sparkling where once
they were. Then she produced a great porcelain lamp they had
brought from France with them, and some tall silver candlesticks and
candelabra, which vastly improved the mantels, and she re-arranged
the tasteless furniture and bric-à-brac with such skill that she
cheated herself as well as others into believing them pretty.
It was rather an effort to Pembroke, his first visit. He would not
take Miles with him lest he should seem to fear to go alone. It was
now five years past. Naturally they had met often, but in some way,
this meeting impressed him differently. He had at last waked up to
the fact that he could not forget Olivia Berkeley. It angered him
against himself—and so it was in rather an unamiable mood that he
left the House early, and took his way through a drizzling rain to the
Berkeleys’. When he rung the bell, Petrarch’s familiar black face
greeted him.
“Hi, howdy, Marse French. It do my heart good ter see you. Ole
Marse, I spec he everlastin’ cuss when he fin’ out you been here an’
he ain’t home. Miss Livy, she in de settin’ room.”
“And how are you all getting on here?” asked Pembroke, as
Petrarch officiously helped him off with his great-coat.
“Tollerbul, tollerbul, sir. Old marse, he mighty orkard sometimes.
He swar an’ takes de Lord’s name in vain, spite o’ de commandment
‘Doan never you swar at all.’ I try ter make him behave hisse’f ter de
policemens an’ sech, but he quile all de time he gwine long de
street.”
He ushered Pembroke through the drawing-room, into a little
room beyond. On a sofa drawn up to the wood fire, sat Olivia,
making a pretty home-like picture, in the half light, contrasted with
the dreary drawing-room beyond, and the dismal drizzle outside.
They had not met for nearly two years. The session of Congress
had lasted almost through the year, and when he had been in the
county last, Olivia was away in the mountains. He noticed instantly
that she was very, very pretty, but her beauty had taken a graver and
more womanly cast. Oh, the elaborate ease, to cover the
overpowering awkwardness of those former tête-à-tête meetings!
Pembroke felt this acutely when he first saw her—but it vanished
strangely at the moment that Olivia held out her little hand and spoke
to him. Her voice, her manner, were pleasantly natural. It carried him
back to the old days when he was gradually slipping into love with
her. How grateful and soothing had been her native charm as an
escape from Madame Koller’s exaggerated heroics!
“Papa will be sorry to miss you,” she said pointing him to the
easiest chair, and putting her feet comfortably on a footstool.
“Do you think you’ll like it?” asked Pembroke.
“That’s just what I was going to ask you.”
“You mustn’t ask me. You know Congressmen are received in
society only on sufferance. I exist on the borders as it were, and am
permitted to dwell there in spite of, not because I am a
Congressman.”
Olivia smiled and nodded her head.
“I know how it is,” she said, “I’ve heard.”
“Now what do you want to do first?”
“I think,” said Olivia, propping her rounded chin on her hand, “I
should like to go to a ball. I have not been to a real ball for six years
—not since we left Paris. You may be surprised at this frivolity in one
of my years—you know I am getting out of my twenties awfully fast—
but it is still a fact.”
“Your age is certainly imposing. There is a superb ball to be given
at the Russian Legation next week—the Minister is a new man—just
come. I received a card, and I can get one for you and your father
through one of the secretaries of legation who is my friend.”
Pembroke produced a handsome invitation card, bearing the
name of the Russian Minister and Madame Volkonsky.
Olivia’s eyes sparkled. She loved balls as the normal girl always
does.
“And I shall go out to-morrow morning and buy a ball gown. Shall
I have white tulle and water lilies, or peach-blow satin?”
“White, by all means,” answered Pembroke, gravely. “I like to see
women in white.”
“A white gown,” continued Olivia, reflectively, “is always safest.”
“I suppose, you will go to balls all the time after this one. It will be
like the first taste of blood to a tiger.”
“Yes, after a long period of—what do you call it—graminivorous
diet. By the way, some friends of yours came to see me to-day. The
De Peysters.”
“Yes, I like them very much. Helena is a charming little thing.”
“Delightful girl,” echoed Olivia, with much more emphasis than
the subject required.
Pembroke had only intended to pay an ordinary afternoon call,
but it was so unexpectedly pleasant sitting there with Olivia that the
fall of night and the Colonel’s return both took him unawares. The
Colonel was delighted to see him.
“This is pleasant,” cried he, standing with his broad back to the
fire, and stroking his white mustache. “I brought my riding horse up,
and Olivia’s, too, and I sent Petrarch around this morning to make a
permanent arrangement. The rogue of a livery man asked me such a
stupendous price that I was forced to send him word I didn’t desire
board for myself and my daughter included with the horses. Ah,
times are changed—times are changed! Sad lot of you in public life
now, begad.”
“Very sad lot, sir.”
“If we could only get back to Old Hickory in the White House, and
the mail twice a week from New York, brought in the stage coach—”
“And Old Hickory’s penchant for Mrs. Eaton, and half the
Congress getting tight at the White House New Year’s Day. We
ought to have it all.”
“Yes—yes—Zounds, sir, we ought to have it all!”
Then there was the ball to talk about, and presently, Pembroke
declining the Colonel’s hearty invitation to stay and dine off whatever
miserable fare a city market afforded, and try some port he had
brought from Virginia, knowing there was nothing fit to drink to be
had in Washington, he left. Olivia’s invitation to stay was rather faint
—had it been heartier, perhaps he might have remained. As it was,
he went home, and surprised Miles by coming in whistling jovially.
CHAPTER XV.
The night of the ball arrived. Olivia and her father, the De
Peysters and Pembroke had all agreed to go in one party. The De
Peysters had been very kind and attentive to Olivia. Her gentle ways
had captivated Mrs. De Peyster, and the fun innate in her had done
the same for Helena. They had asked Olivia to receive with them on
their reception day, and she had made quite a little success on her
first appearance in Washington society. She sat behind a cosy tea
table in an alcove, and poured tea with much grace. She was a good
linguist, and put two or three young diplomatists, struggling with the
English tongue, at ease by talking to them in their own language.
She possessed the indefinable charm of good breeding, never more
effective than when contrasted with the flamboyant, cosmopolitan
Washington society. The women soon found out that the men flocked
around her. She had half a dozen invitations before the day was out.
Helena, a soft, blonde, kittenish young thing, was in raptures over
her, admiring her as only a very young girl can admire and adore one
a little older than herself. Pembroke was among the later callers,
and, strange to say, Miles was with him. There were but few persons
there by that time, and these Mrs. De Peyster was entertaining in the
large drawing-room. Helena brought Miles into the little alcove and
plied him with soft speeches, tea and cakes. Pembroke and Olivia
sitting by exchanged smiles at the two enjoying themselves boy and
girl fashion. Helena was but nineteen, and Miles had not yet passed
his twenty-third birthday. The horror of his wound was added to by
the youth of his features.
“Now take this little cake,” said Helena, earnestly. “I made these
myself. Do you know that I can make cakes?”
“What an accomplished girl! I shall be afraid of you. I learned to
make ash cakes during the war,” answered Miles as gravely.
“What is an ash cake, pray?”
“Why, it’s—it’s—corn bread baked in the ashes.”
“Oh, how funny! And how do you get the ashes off?”
“Wash them off.”
In the course of the discussion Miles had quite forgotten a
piteous and ineffective little stratagem of his to turn the uninjured
side of his face toward whom he was addressing. He leaned forward,
gazing into Helena’s pretty but somewhat meaningless face, just as
any other youngster might have done, and Helena, with youthful
seriousness, had plunged into the sentimental discussion wherein
the American girl is prone to fall. Pembroke would have gone after
ten minutes, but Miles was so evidently enjoying himself, that the
elder brother stayed on. It was like the afternoon at Olivia’s house—
so home-like and pleasant—Olivia and himself keeping up a
desultory conversation while they sipped tea and listened half-
amused to the two youngsters on the other side of the round table.
Olivia glanced at the clock over the mantel—it was half-past six.
“I must go,” she said. “I shall just have time for my dinner and for
an hour’s rest before I dress for the ball.”
Mrs. De Peyster and Helena urged her to remain and dine, but
Olivia declined, and the servant announced her carriage. Pembroke
put her white burnous around her in the hall, and handed her to her
carriage. They were all to meet at the Russian Legation at half-past
ten.
At that hour the broad street in front of the Legation was packed
with carriages. An awning for the waiting footmen extended on each
side of the broad porte cochére. Half a dozen policemen kept the
carriages in line and the coachmen in order—for this was the great
ball of the season, a royal grand duke was to be present, and the
fame of Madame Volkonsky’s beauty had gone far and wide. The
vast house blazed with lights, and amid the rolling of wheels, and the
hubbub of many voices could be heard the strains of an orchestra
floating out.
Almost at the same moment the carriages containing Olivia and
her father, Pembroke and the De Peysters drove up, and the party
vanished upstairs.
“How beautiful you are!” cried Helena delightedly, up in the
dressing room, as Olivia dropped her wraps and appeared in her
dainty white toilette, Olivia blushed with gratified vanity. Her dress
was the perfection of simplicity, soft and diaphanous, and around her
milk white arms and throat were her mother’s pearls.
As the three ladies came out into the brilliant corridor to meet
their escorts, Pembroke received a kind of thrill at Olivia’s beauty—a
beauty which had never struck him very forcibly before. She was
undoubtedly pretty and graceful, and he had often admired her slight
and willowy figure—but she had grown beautiful in her solitary
country life—beautiful with patience, courage and womanliness. The
Colonel, in a superb swallow-tail of the style of ten years past, his
coat-tails lined with white satin, his snowy ruffle falling over the
bosom of his waistcoat, his fine curling white hair combed carefully
down upon his velvet collar in the old fashion, offered his arm like a
prince to Mrs. De Peyster, herself a stately and imposing matron,
and proud to be escorted by such a chevalier. Pembroke walked
beside Olivia and Helena down the broad staircase.
Is there any form of social life more imposing than a really
splendid ball? The tall and nodding ferns and palms, the penetrating
odor of flowers, the clash of music, the brilliant crowd moving to and
fro through the great drawing-rooms and halls, brought a deeper
flush to Olivia’s cheek. She felt like a débutante.
They made their way slowly toward the upper end of the last of a
noble suite of rooms. Pembroke was just saying in low tone to the
two girls, “I have looked out for your interests with the Grand Duke.
My friend Ryleief has promised to present both of you—an honor I
waived for myself, as being quite beneath the Grand Duke’s notice,
and—”
“Colonel and Miss Berkeley, Mrs. and Miss de Peyster; Mr.
Pembroke—” was bawled out by Pembroke’s friend, Ryleief who was
making the introductions to the new Minister and his wife—and the
party stood face to face with Ahlberg and Madame Koller.
The rencontre was so staggering and unexpected that Pembroke
quite lost his self-possession. He gazed stupidly at the pair before
him—M. and Madame Volkonsky, who had formed much of his life
five years before as Ahlberg and Elise Koller. He saw Ahlberg’s
breast covered with orders, and he wore an elaborate court suit.
Madame Koller, or Madame Volkonsky, blazed with diamonds. Her
hair was as blonde and as abundant as ever, and far behind her
streamed a gorgeous satin train of the same golden hue as her hair.
Olivia, too, felt that sudden shock at meeting people who rise, as
it were, like the dead from their graves. She felt also that repulsion
that came from a knowledge of both of them. She could only silently
bow as they were presented. But both M. and Madame Volkonsky
expressed more than mere surprise at the meeting. Ahlberg or
Volkonsky as he now was, turned excessively pale. His uncertain
glance fell on Pembroke, and turned again on his wife. As for her,
the same pallor showed under the delicate rouge on her cheek, but
women rally more quickly under these things than men do. Besides,
she had contemplated the possibility of meeting some of these
people, and was not altogether unprepared for it.
If, however, the blankness of amazement had seized upon Olivia
and Pembroke, and if the De Peysters were also a little unnerved by
the strangeness of what was occurring before them, Colonel
Berkeley was as cool as a cucumber. He held out his hand warmly.
He rolled out his salutations in a loud, rich voice.
“Why, how do you do Eliza. You’ll excuse an old man, my dear,
for calling you by your first name, won’t you? And my friend Ahlberg
that was. This is delightful,” he added, looking around as if to
challenge the whole party.
In the midst of the strange sensations which agitated him,
Pembroke could scarcely forbear from laughing at the Colonel’s
greeting, and the effect it produced. Madame Volkonsky flushed
violently, still under her rouge, while Volkonsky’s face was a study in
its helpless rage. Poor Ryleief, with a mob of fine people surging up
to be introduced, was yet so consumed with curiosity, that he held
them all at bay, and looked from one to the other.
“Does Madame understand that gentleman?” he asked in French,
eagerly—
“Of course she does, my dear fellow,” heartily responded Colonel
Berkeley in English. “She spoke English long before she learned
Rooshan, if she ever learned it. Hay, Eliza?”
The Colonel’s manner was so very dignified, and although jovial,
so far removed from familiarity, that Madame Volkonsky did not know
whether to be pleased by the recognition or annoyed. If, as it was
likely, it should come out that she was an American, here were
people of the best standing who could vouch at least for her origin.
She held out her hand to the Colonel, and said rapidly in French:
“I am very glad to meet you. I cannot say much here, but I hope
to see you presently.” When Pembroke made his bow and passed,
Volkonsky called up all his ineffable assurance and gave him a
scowl, which Pembroke received with a bow and a cool smile that
was sarcasm itself. Madame Volkonsky did not look at him as she
bowed, nor did he look at her.
In a moment they were clear of the press. The De Peysters were
full of curiosity.
“Who were they? Who are they?” breathlessly asked Helena.
“My dear young lady,” responded the Colonel, smoothing down
his shirt-frill with his delicate old hand, “Who they were I can very
easily tell you. Who they are, I am blessed if I know.”
While the Colonel was giving a highly picturesque account of
Eliza Peyton through all her transformations until she came to be
Elise Koller, since when Colonel Berkeley had no knowledge of her
whatever, Pembroke had given his arm to Olivia, and they moved off
into a quiet corner, where the spreading leaves of a great palm made
a little solitude in the midst of the crowd, and the lights and the crash
of music and the beating of the dancers’ feet in the distance.
Pembroke was alternately pale and red. Madame Volkonsky was
nothing to him now, but he hated Volkonsky with the reprehensible
but eminently human hatred that one man sometimes feels for
another. Volkonsky was a scoundrel and an imposter. It made him
furious to think that he should have dared to return to America, albeit
he should come as the accredited Minister of a great power. It
showed a defiance of what he, Pembroke, knew and could relate of
him, that was infuriating to his self-love. For Elise, he did not know
exactly what he most felt—whether pity or contempt. And the very
last time that he and Olivia Berkeley had discussed Madame Koller
was on that April night in the old garden at Isleham—a recollection
far from pleasant.
“Papa’s remark that this meeting was delightful, struck me as
rather ingeniously inappropriate,” said Olivia, seeking the friendly
cover of a joke. “It is frightfully embarrassing to meet people this
way.”
“Very,” sententiously answered Pembroke. He was still in a whirl.
Then there was a pause. Suddenly Pembroke bent over toward
her and said distinctly:
“Olivia, did you ever doubt what I told you that night in the garden
about Madame Koller? that she was then, and had been for a long
time, nothing to me? Did you ever have a renewal of your unjust
suspicions?”
“No,” answered Olivia, as clearly, after a short silence.
In another instant they were among the crowd of dancers in the
ball room. Neither knew exactly how they happened to get there.
Pembroke did not often dance, and was rather surprised when he
found himself whirling around the ball room with Olivia, to the rhythm
of a dreamy waltz. It was soon over. It came back to Olivia that she
ought not so soon to part company with the De Peysters, and she
stopped at once, thereby cutting short her own rapture as well as
Pembroke’s. Without a word, Pembroke led her back to where the
Colonel and Mrs. De Peyster and Helena were. Helena’s pretty face
wore a cloud. She had not yet been asked to dance, and was more
puzzled than pleased at the meeting which she had witnessed in all
its strangeness. Pembroke good naturedly took her for a turn and
brought her back with her card half filled and the smiles dimpling all
over her face.
Meanwhile, the ball went on merrily. Ryleief escaped from his
post as soon as possible and sought Pembroke.
“So you knew M. Volkonsky?” he said eagerly, in a whisper.
“Yes,” said Pembroke—and his look and tone expressed
volumes.
Ryleief held him by the arm, and whispered:
“This is confidential. I suspected from the first that our new chief
was—eh—you know—not exactly—”
“Yes,” answered Pembroke, “not exactly a gentleman. An arrant
knave and coward, in short.”
Ryleief, a mature diplomatic sprig, looked fixedly at Pembroke,
his hard Muscovite face growing expressive.
“Speaking as friends, my dear Pembroke—and, you understand
in my position the necessity of prudence—M. Volkonsky is not
unknown among the Russian diplomats. He has been recalled once
—warned repeatedly. Once, some years ago, it was supposed he
had been dismissed from the diplomatic corps. But he reappeared
about five years ago under another name—he was originally an
Ahlberg. He certainly inherited some money, married some more,
and took the name of Volkonsky—said it was a condition of his
fortune. He has been chargé d’affaires at Munich—later at Lisbon—
both promotions for him. What his power is at the Foreign Office I
know not—certainly not his family, because he has none. It is said he
is a Swiss.”
“He will not be long here,” remarked Pembroke. Then Pembroke
went away and wandered about, feeling uncomfortable, as every
man does, under the same roof as his enemy. He felt no
compunction as to being the guest of Volkonsky. The legation was
Russian property—the ball itself was not paid for out of Volkonsky’s
own pocket, but by his government. Pembroke felt, though, that
when it came out, as it must, the part that he would take in exposing
the Russian Minister, his presence at the ball might not be
understood, and he would gladly have left the instant he found out
who Volkonsky really was but for the Berkeleys and the De Peysters.
He stood off and watched the two girls as they danced—both with
extreme grace. There was no lack of partners for them. Mrs. De
Peyster, with the Colonel hovering near her, did not have her
charges on her hands for much of the time. The truth is, Olivia,
although the shock and surprise of meeting two people who were
connected with a painful part of her life was unpleasant, yet was she
still young and fresh enough to feel the intoxication of a ball. The
music got into her feet, the lights and flowers dazzled her eyes. She
was old enough to seize the present moment of enjoyment, and to
postpone unpleasant things to the morrow, and young enough to feel
a keen enjoyment in the present. She would never come to another
ball at the Russian Legation, so there was that much more reason
she should enjoy this one.
As Pembroke passed near her once she made a little mocking
mouth at him.
“Your friend, Ryleief, promised that I should be introduced to the
Grand Duke—and—”
“Look out,” answered Pembroke, laughing, “he is coming this
way. Now look your best.”
At that very instant Ryleief was making his way toward them with
the Grand Duke, a tall, military looking fellow, who surveyed the
crowd with very unpretending good humor. Pembroke saw the
presentation made, and Olivia drop a courtesy, which Helena De
Peyster, at her elbow, imitated as the scion of royalty bowed to her.
The Grand Duke squared off and began a conversation with Olivia.
She had the sort of training to pay him the delicate flattery which
princes love, but she had the American sense of humor which the
continental foreigners find so captivating. Pembroke, still smiling to
himself, imagined the platitudes his royal highness was bestowing
upon the young American girl, when suddenly the Grand Duke’s
mouth opened wide, and he laughed outright at something Olivia had
said. Thenceforth her fortune was made with the Grand Duke.
The next thing Pembroke saw was Olivia placing her hand in the
Grand Duke’s, and the pair went sailing around the room in the
peculiar slow and ungraceful waltz danced by foreigners. Olivia had
no difficulty in keeping step with her six-foot Grand Duke, and really
danced the awkward dance as gracefully as it could be done. Mrs.
De Peyster’s face glowed as they passed. Olivia was chaperoned by
her, and as such she enjoyed a reflected glory. The great maternal
instinct welled up in her—she glanced at Helena—but Helena was
so young—a mere chit—and Mrs. De Peyster was not of an envious
nature. Colonel Berkeley felt a kind of pride at the success Olivia
was making, but when a superb dowager sitting next Mrs. De
Peyster asked, in a loud whisper, if he was “the father of Miss
Berkeley,” the Colonel’s wrath rose. He made a courtly bow, and
explained that Miss Berkeley was the daughter of Colonel Berkeley,
of Virginia.
Not only once did the Grand Duke dance with Olivia, but twice—
and he asked permission to call on her the next afternoon.
“With the greatest pleasure,” answered Olivia gayly—“and—pray
don’t forget to come.”
At which the Grand Duke grinned like any other man at a merry
challenge from a girl.
At last the ball was over. Toward two o’clock Pembroke put the
ladies of his party in their carriages and started to walk home.
Madame Volkonsky had not been able to spoil the ball for Olivia.
“Good-bye,” she cried to Pembroke, waving her hand. “To-
morrow at four o’clock he comes—I shall begin making my toilette at
twelve.”
“Very pretty ball of Eliza Peyton’s,” said the Colonel, settling
himself back in the carriage and buttoning up his great-coat.
“Volkonsky—ha! ha! And that fellow, Ahlberg—by Gad! an infernal
sneaking cur—I beg your pardon, my dear, for swearing, but of all
the damned impostors I ever saw M. Volkonsky is the greatest,
excepting always Eliza Peyton.”
CHAPTER XVI.
While Olivia might wince, and the Colonel chuckle over the
Volkonsky incident, it was a more serious matter to Volkonsky. He
had certainly taken into account the possibility of meeting some old
acquaintances, but neither he nor Madame Volkonsky had cared to
keep up with events in the remote county in Virginia, where they had
passed some agitating days. Volkonsky therefore was quite unaware
that Pembroke was in Congress. The first meeting to him was an
unpleasant shock, as he had learned to fear Pembroke much in
other days. But when he began to inquire quietly about him of
Ryleief, who evidently knew him, Volkonsky’s discomfort was very
much increased. For Ryleief, who rather exaggerated the influence
of a representative in Congress, impressed forcibly upon Volkonsky
that Pembroke possessed power—and when Volkonsky began to
take in that Pembroke’s determined enmity as a member of the
Foreign Affairs Committee might amount to something, he began to
be much disturbed. Before the last guest had rolled away from the
door on the night of the ball, Volkonsky and his wife were closeted
together in the Minister’s little study. Whatever passing fancy
Madame Volkonsky might have entertained for Pembroke some
years ago, Volkonsky was quite indifferent—and if Pembroke
retained any lingering weakness for her—well enough—he might be
induced to let Volkonsky dwell in peace.
When Madame Volkonsky entered the room, her husband placed
a chair for her. Often they quarreled, and sometimes they were
reported to fight, but he never omitted those little attentions. Madame
Volkonsky’s face was pale. She did not know how much lay in
Pembroke’s power to harm them, but she was shaken by the
encounter. It was hard, just at the opening of a new life, to meet
those people. It was so easy to be good now. They were free for a
time from duns and creditors—for during her marriage to Ahlberg
she had become acquainted with both. She had a fine
establishment, a splendid position—and at the very outset arose the
ghost of a dead and gone fancy, and the woman before whom she
had in vain humiliated herself, and the man who knew enough to ruin
her husband. It was trying and it made her look weary and very old.
Volkonsky began in French:
“So you met your old acquaintances to-night.”
“Yes.”
“That charming M. le Colonel called you Eliza Peyton.”
“Yes,” again answered Madame Volkonsky.
“This comes of that crazy expedition to America which I tried to
dissuade you from.”
Madame Volkonsky again nodded. She was not usually so meek.
“And that haughty, overbearing Pembroke. Does he still cherish
that romantic sentiment for you, I wonder.”
Madame Volkonsky blushed faintly. She was not as devoid of
delicacy as her husband.
“If he does,” continued Volkonsky, meditatively, “he might be
induced—if you should appeal to him—”
“Appeal to him for what?” inquired Madame Volkonsky, rising and
turning paler. The contempt in her tone angered Volkonsky.
“Not to ruin us. That man is now in the Congress. He has to do
with foreign affairs. He hates me, and, by God, I hate him. He knows
things that may cause you to give up this establishment—that may
send us back across the water under unpleasant circumstances. You
know about the dispute at cards, and other things—you have not
failed to remind me of them,—and if Pembroke is disposed he can
use this with frightful effect now.”
Madame Volkonsky remained perfectly silent. She was stunned
by the information Volkonsky gave her—but Volkonsky was quite
oblivious of her feelings. He was gnawing his yellow mustache.
“You might see him,” he said. “You might appeal to him—throw
yourself on his mercy—”
“What a wretch you are,” suddenly burst out Madame Volkonsky
in English. They had talked in French all this time, which she spoke
apparently as well as English—but like most people, she fell into the
vernacular when under the influence of strong emotion. Volkonsky
glanced up at her.
“What is it now?” he asked, peevishly.
His wife turned two blazing eyes on him. The fact that she was
not upon a very high plane herself did not prevent her from being
indignant at his baseness—and wounded pride drove home the
thrust.
“That you should dare, that any man should dare—to propose
that a wife should work on a man’s past liking for her to serve her
husband’s ends. Ahlberg, every day that I have lived with you has
shown me new baseness in you.”
This was not the first time Volkonsky had heard this—but it was
none the less unpleasant. Also, he rather dreaded Madame
Volkonsky’s occasional outbursts of temper—and he had had
enough for one night.
“It is no time for us to quarrel—and particularly do not call me
Ahlberg. My name is now legally Volkonsky, and I would wish to
forget it ever was anything else. We should better design how to
keep this Pembroke at bay. I am sure,” continued Volkonsky
plaintively, “I have never sought to injure him. Why should he try to
ruin me for a little scene at a card table that occurred five years ago?
I wonder if that ferocious Cave will turn up soon?”
Madame Volkonsky turned and left him in disgust. In spite of her
cosmopolitan education, and all her associations, there was born
with her an admiration for Anglo-Saxon pluck which made her
despise Volkonsky methods. The idea of scheming and designing to
placate a man who had caught him cheating at cards filled her with
infinite contempt.
In the course of the next few days, Madame Volkonsky was
deeply exercised over the influence that Pembroke would have upon
her future. She had talked their affairs over often with her husband in
those few days. He had not failed to convey to her the rather
exaggerated impression that he had received from Ryleief, as to
Pembroke’s power to harm.
One afternoon, when Volkonsky and his wife were driving in their
victoria, they passed the Secretary of State’s carriage drawn up to
the sidewalk. Pembroke was about to step into it. The Secretary
himself, a handsome, elderly man, was leaning forward to greet him,
as Pembroke placed his foot on the step. Madame Volkonsky looked
at her husband, who looked blankly back in return. The Secretary’s
carriage whirled around, and both gentlemen bowed—the Secretary
to both the Minister and his wife, Pembroke pointedly to Madame
Volkonsky.
Volkonsky turned a little pale as they drove off.
“I wonder if the Secretary will ever speak to us again,” said
Madame Volkonsky, half maliciously.
Yet it was as much to her as to him. It would indeed be hard were
they driven in disgrace from Washington. Volkonsky had been
surprisingly lucky all his life, but luck always takes a turn. Now, his
recall as Minister would be of more consequence than his
escapades as attaché or Secretary of Legation. Then, he had played
wild works with her fortune, such as it was. Madame Volkonsky’s
thoughts grew bitter. First had come that struggle of her girlhood—
then her artistic career—ending in a cruel failure. Afterward the
dreadful years of life tied to Koller’s bath chair—followed by her
stormy and disappointed widowhood. This was the first place she
had ever gained that promised security or happiness—and behold!
all was likely to fall like a house of cards.
They paid one or two visits, and left cards at several places.
Madame Volkonsky had imagined that nothing could dull the
exquisite pleasure of being a personage, of being followed, flattered,
admired. She found out differently. The fame of her beauty and
accomplishments had preceded her. Everywhere she received the
silent ovation which is the right of a beautiful and charming woman—
but her heart was heavy. At one place she passed Olivia and her
father coming out as they were going in. Olivia, wrapped in furs,
looked uncommonly pretty and free from care. As the two women
passed, each, while smiling affably, wore that hostile air which ladies
are liable to assume under the circumstances. The Colonel was all
bows and smiles to Madame Volkonsky as usual, and refrained from
calling her Eliza.
Nor did the presence of the Volkonskys in Washington conduce
to Olivia’s enjoyment although it certainly did to her father’s. The
Colonel was delighted. In the course of years, Eliza Peyton had
afforded him great amusement. He was a chivalrous man to women,
although not above teasing Madame Volkonsky, but he refrained
from doing what poor Elise very much dreaded he would—telling of
her American origin. She had admitted that her mother was an
American—an admission necessary to account for the native,
idiomatic way in which she spoke the English language, and Colonel
Berkeley knowing this, did not hesitate to say that in years gone by,
he had known Madame Volkonsky’s mother, and very cheerfully bore
testimony to the fact that the mother had been of good family and
gentle breeding. So instead of being a disadvantage to her, it was
rather a help. But Olivia and herself were so distinctly antipathetic
that it could scarcely fail to produce antagonism. And besides her
whole course about Pembroke had shocked Olivia. Olivia was
amazed—it was not the mere difference of conduct and opinion—it
was the difference of temperament. Remembering that Madame
Volkonsky had at least the inheritance of refinement, and was quite
at home in the usages of gentle breeding, it seemed the more
inexcusable. In all those years Olivia had been unable to define her
feelings to Pembroke. She could easily have persuaded herself that
she was quite indifferent to him except that she could not forget him.
It annoyed her. It was like a small, secret pain, a trifling malady, of
which the sufferer is ashamed to speak.
Not so Pembroke. The love that survives such a blow to pride
and vanity as a refusal, is love indeed—and after the first tempest of
mortification he had realized that his passion would not die, but
needed to be killed—and after five years of partial absence,
awkward estrangement, all those things which do most effectually kill
everything which is not love, her presence was yet sweet and potent.
The discovery afforded him a certain grim amusement. He was
getting well on in his thirties. His hair was turning prematurely gray,
and he felt that youth was behind him—a not altogether unpleasant
feeling to an ambitious man. Nevertheless, they went on dining
together at the Berkeleys’ own house, at the De Peysters’, at other
places, meeting constantly at the same houses—for Pembroke went
out more than he had ever done in Washington before, drawn subtly
by the chance of meeting Olivia—although where once she was cool
and friendly, she was now a little warmer in her manner, yet not
wholly free from embarrassment. But neither was unhappy.

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The International Bureau of Education

(1925-1968): "The Ascent From the

The Ascent Adam Plantinga

VAJPAYEE: The Ascent of the Hindu Right, 1924–1977

Elite Education and Internationalisation: From the

The Oxford Handbook of the Egyptian Book of the Dead

Trapped: Brides of the Kindred Book 29 Faith Anderson

The Concept of the Individual in the Thought of Karl

The Unofficial Guide to Universal Orlando 2024 Seth

Science Education and International Cross-Cultural

The International Bureau

Eugenia Roldan Vera

ISSN 2731-6408 ISSN 2731-6416 (electronic)

Cover credit: Stocktrek Images/Mark Stevenson/Getty Images

Paper in this product is recyclable.

This book makes the history of the International Bureau of Education

theoretical and empirical issues with particularly qualified experts,2 to whom

question have now been digitalised. It is thanks to the generous welcome

Geneva, Switzerland Rita Hofstetter

Part I The IBE: An Actor of Its Time 27

Faced with Competition, a Strategy to Review 54

Conclusion to Part I 103

Part II Educational Reformism, Pacifist Internationalism,

Conclusion to Part II 163

Part III The Modus Operandi of the ICPEs 167

Conclusion to Part III 215

Part IV Focusing on Universality: Geopolitical Issues 219

Conclusion to Part IV 281

Part V The Universalisation of the Benefits of Education? 285

Conclusion to Part V 367

A-IBE Archives of the International Bureau of Education

Fig. 16.1 Graphic representation of the mentions, during the general

Image 1.1 The emblem of the IBE. A vignette drawn by children of

conferences and its state delegates replaced these summer

rules; on the right-hand side, a short description of its

publication was on team work in school). It contains

racial prejudices, to be banned from textbooks. Obviously,

Table 8.1 Educational and other associations corresponding with

© The Author(s) 2024 1

and legitimacy required of such a “sanctuary”3: strict objectivity, scientific

sociogenesis of the IBE’s ambitions and achievements within its relational

The IBE: A Matrix for Educational Internationalism

An Increasingly Universal Orientation

inaugurated in the early days of the institution, was intended to bring it

Throughout the twentieth century, the orientation of the IBE towards

Universal/Universality: Conceptual Tools

Critical approaches assert the possibility of the construction of another

Balibar (2020) and the lecture just mentioned.

differences and nuances can be incorporated into the universal itself. To

The universal as a process of construction thus implies a multiversum.

Our Theme: The Universal and the IBE—Ambitions,

universal; by generalising to humanity as a whole24 objective results that

Structure of the Book: Five Complementary

that would be guaranteed by associating with the universality of the

Cold War and the multiplicity of international institutions that arrogated

Will our analysis allow us to better understand how likely it would be

Exploiting Exceptional Documentary Heritage

accessible to all, convinced as they were that universal access to knowledge

formalised, reproducing its constructivist approach to education and science

Part I The IBE: An Actor of Its Time 27

Faced with Competition, a Strategy to Review 54

Conclusion to Part I 103

Part II Educational Reformism, Pacifist Internationalism,

Conclusion to Part II 163

Part III The Modus Operandi of the ICPEs 167

Conclusion to Part III 215

Part IV Focusing on Universality: Geopolitical Issues 219

Conclusion to Part IV 281

Part V The Universalisation of the Benefits of Education? 285

Conclusion to Part V 367