On the other hand, it was all very well to say, “Cut down your numbers,” but how could this be done if scientific and medical development lagged so far behind that few knew how to do it? Building up huge populations by following the way of nature was fairly simple, but it was by no means simple to reduce them again voluntarily. No long-range program was possible until economists, sociologists, and biologists alike should garner and contribute facts to the solution. Therefore the occasion was now ripe for the attention of the scientific world to be focused on the population question. I planned to bring them together at Geneva, the logical meeting place.
Dr. Little, who had accepted the presidency for the next international birth control conference, had gone to the University of Michigan as its President. He had no time for organizing, raising money, getting speakers; if this lengthy job of organizing the World Population Conference were to be done I should have to do it.
So great was the competition between the League of Nations and other groups desiring to hold conventions at Geneva during its sessions that you had to book an auditorium and rooms for delegates practically twelve months ahead. Consequently, towards the end of 1926 I went to Geneva to make arrangements for an expected three hundred guests. I had previously become acquainted with several Genevese. William Rappard, then a professor at the university there, consented to go on our committee and advise me on social details with which only a native would be familiar.
More vital to me was the Labor Office of the League, where it was not a matter of politics but of industrial problems thrashed out by people chosen for their special knowledge. Here I met Albert Thomas, a strange-looking person, short, stocky, with black beard sprouting over his face, very talkative, amazing in his energy, traveling over Europe by night, arriving in Geneva in the morning, conducting his business affairs, making speeches. But with all this activity he managed to spare hours enough to help me immeasurably when I consulted him on subjects, persons, locations, and dates.
The Salle Centrale was engaged for three days, August 30th to September 2nd of the next year, 1927. Back I went to London to enlist an English committee. Clinton Chance became my husband’s assistant in supervising finances, and also provided London headquarters in his offices, supplying stenographers and secretaries. Edith How-Martyn joined us and I secured the invaluable aid of Julian Huxley, brother of Aldous, a brilliant, young, enthusiastic scientist, alive and having a mind that not only took things in, but gave them out. The Conference owed much to his fair and just opinions and the fine supporters he rounded up. Together we went over names and names and names, trying to choose a chairman of sufficient distinction around whom European scientists would rally. Professor A. M. Carr-Saunders at first accepted, but a month and a half later informed me his other obligations were so heavy he would have to limit his participation to membership on the Council.
After weeks of uncertainty, interviews, and rejections, we selected Sir Bernard Mallet, K.C.B., once of the Foreign Office, Treasury, Board of Inland Revenue, later Registrar General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, and President of the Royal Statistical Society. Although very English, he was not too conservative. He knew well Sir Eric Drummond, then head of the League of Nations, and also had many friends on the Continent, particularly in Italy. He was typical of an individual who had climbed far, who knew where he was going and the road by which he should travel. Bored at being now in retirement, he accepted our offer willingly because, although no salary was attached, it would give him a position and an interest, and keep him socially in touch with noteworthy figures. Lady Mallet’s previous experience as lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria made her an expert hostess, and this too we needed.
Once I had to make an expedition all the way to Edinburgh to seek out Dr. F. A. E. Crew, a shining light among the younger biologists, who was making hens crow and roosters lay eggs. He readily agreed to come to the Conference and during the two days I visited him helped me build up my program.
I also wanted a paper read by André Siegfried, author of America Comes of Age, written after journeying some six weeks through the United States. When he invited me to tea at his home in Paris, I found him in appearance more like a mixture of American and English than French. But you could feel from his attitude and deduce from his conversation that he really envied, despised, hated Americans; by invading France with our “wealth and vulgarity,” we had utterly spoiled it for his compatriots. Appreciating good food, which we never had at home, we squandered enormously, four or five times what they did. The same was true of wine; we were drinking their best, paying high for it without being able to tell the difference when we were given cheap vintages. Consequently, the Parisians were being shut out of Paris because they could not afford the prices.
“I don’t see how you can blame the Americans for coming over and paying what you French ask,” I replied. “You might have a complaint perhaps if we tried to undersell you or refused to buy. But it seems to me you are profiting considerably by this ‘outrageous intrusion of the American dollar.’”
Although we did not get on very well and although he would not read a paper, he consented to attend.