Professional Documents
Culture Documents
F Rabout
o Mthe xath to the ~7th of September
one hundred and fifty writers,
was, was exceptionally spirited and to the
point. Rather, each speaker commentedon
politicians, journalists, university teachers someaspect or issue in one of the several
met in the austerely elegant MuseoNazionale papers whichhad been laid before the con-
della Tecnicae della Scienza to expoundto ferenceat that particular session, andthen the
each other their ideas about "The Future of author of each paper at the endof the session
Freedom." commented on the points made by the
The conference, which was convoked by speakers about his papers. Only whenthe
the Congress for Cultural Freedom, was chairman was far-sighted enough to group
painstakingly prepared with clear intention. the commentatorsabout a few basic themes
It was not the purposeof the organisers to did the procession of speakers become a
end with definite conclusions, with agreed parade rather than a promenade. This
statements or with public pronou~.cements. happened, for example, when Mr. Minoo
It was rather to forward the process of Masani, the clear-witted author-diplomat-
breaking the encrustations of liberal and politician-businessman from Bombay,pre-
socialist thought, to discover their common sided over the session devoted to the
ground, and to push forward with the task similarities and differences of "Communist"
of formulating more realistic and more and "capitalist" economicsystems; he had,
inclusive ideas on the conditions of the free it was true, the advantage of having under
society. his chairmanship two extremely lucid and
There were, nevertheless, material hin- polemical papers each devotedto exactly the
drances imposed by the ground plan of the same theme--Soviet economic growth--and
long, relatively narrow,meetinghall, and by taking diametrically opposedpositions. Nor-
the lowness of the rostrum from which mally, however,this wasnot the case; there
speakers addressed the audience; and a were several sessions in which there were
general deficiency of the conference lay in four to six papers all very stimulating and
the fact that there was so muchso well and on a very high intellectual level, each
so challengingly said on so many:opics re- different from the others but no one more
. lated to the central themesthat heads were challenging than the others. Thenthe range
sent into a whirl. Appetitesfor further dis- of attention spread and the analysis was not
cussion were continually being amused--first cumulative.
by an avalanche of papers and then by a For this reasonit wouldbe very difficult to
steady stream of speakers whowere allowed summarisethe results of the conference. It
somefive minutesin whichto set forth their was like a conversation amonga group of
best ideas--and they could not be satisfied lively, well-informed,and disciplined minds
except on the occasion whenit was possible which goes on for hours and hours and
to meetat lunch or dinner, by whichtime the touches on long series of fascinating and
scent of the idea had been somewhatdissi- tricky problems,refreshes themall, settles
pated. In the sessions themselvesthere was none, a:ad passes from one to the other with-
little such interchange--though what there out either an explicit consolidation of the
5).
Edward Shils