I N T R O D U C T I O N T O V O L U M E 1 4 l x i i i of demoralization” and informed the ICIC that he was prepared to rejoin the com- mittee if they still wanted him (Doc. 258). Soon thereafter he was reelected. Ein- stein now felt that the situation in Europe had improved, but not in Germany, and penned an official statement on rejoining the committee (Docs. 273, 274). When in late July Einstein traveled to Geneva to attend the fourth session of the ICIC, he wrote home to Elsa that he was favorably impressed with the meetings and that he intended to “dedicate time and energy” to this cause. He apparently put up “quite a struggle” opposing a French initiative to establish a future International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation in Paris, since in his view such a step would eventually entail the relocation of the ICIC itself from Geneva to Paris. But upon receiving fur- ther clarifications, his concerns were assuaged (Docs. 291, 299, 300). In late Au- gust he wrote an article on the recent meetings of the ICIC for the Frankfurter Zeitung, expressing his favorable impression with the overall positive attitude to- ward Germany and the issue of its joining the League of Nations (Einstein 1924n [Doc. 314]). Nevertheless, he told his son Hans Albert in October 1924 that he would in the future not be visiting Switzerland as often because the “damn League of Nations” had accepted the establishment of the Institute in Paris (Doc. 348). To his good friend, the French physicist and pacifist Paul Langevin, he noted that the “attitude of the most influential and experienced men here [in Germany] toward France and the League of Nations has changed very much for the better,” although he was skeptical whether such enlightened sentiments were widely held (Doc. 398). With his growing support for the League came a greater interest on Einstein’s part in the creation of a German national commission for the ICIC, a dif- ficult endeavor, since Max Planck, apparently favorably inclined to such a commis- sion in principle, nevertheless seemed to him “helpless” and unwilling to speak out publicly for it (Docs. 399, 416). In early 1925, Einstein tried to bolster support for the nomination of the Austrian art historian Robert Eisler to the position of director of the new institute in Paris (Doc. 428). In advance of the May session of the ICIC, from which he would be absent while in South America, he appealed to Lorentz to support his view that the director should not be a Frenchman in order to forestall the impression that the French government was attempting to exert influence on the ICIC (Doc. 449). But Lorentz asked Einstein not to insist on this point, since it seemed inevitable that the French writer Julien Luchaire would be chosen (Doc. 452). Einstein devoted much thought to Germany’s role in Europe, and his activities surrounding the League of Nations also gave him an opportunity to reflect on broader European issues. In July 1923, he expressed support for European federal- ism, writing in a statement for the German League for Human Rights that the for- mation of a “strong inter-state organization, a sine qua non for Europe, would be