IIW History 1948-1958

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the technical world. The reports of the Secretary-General and the Scientific and Technical Secretary make it possible to follow the process of evolution of the Institute; they give a clear idea of its present admin:strative and technical structure and show how happily means have been evolved to stimulate, assist and coordinate its intellectual activities and ensure that their results are widely circulated. These reports also show what satisfactory results have been obtained from a most fruitful additional activity of the Institute, the organisation of public sessions, and also the Institute's preoccupation with the creation and develop– ment, for which full international collaboration was forthcoming, of the Biblio– graph:ical B ·itllet-in and the Nhdtiz.£ngual Collection of Terms. Finally, the preceding chapters show how, to their mutual advantage, increasingly close liaisons have been established between the II\V and the national welding organisations in the different countries, and the extent to which the IIW's collaboration with the most important international technical institutions has '"'On for it in increasing measure their confidence and esteem. As we have just seen , the activity of the IrW during this first decade has been considerable and, when account is taken of the difficulty of achieving international collaboration, this activity seems even more remarkable. The Institute has to contend with the fact that those who play an active part in the technical world lack time, with the obstacle created by the diversity of languages and ·with the difficulty of holding frequent meetings; and finally, \•vith opposing conceptions, differing evolutions and apparently insurmountable disagreements in outlook. But, happily, those who specialise in that most interesting branch of technology which is welding are to a high degree inspired by the desire to know what others are thinking, to meet other technicians for discussion and to seek mutual understanding; by the wish to isolate obstacles and to overcome them with commonsense, experience and research; by the ability to shed light where there was darkness and to create order where there was confusion. But it is necessary to help, encourage and stimulate them and it is towards those ends that the Institute is wholehearteclly advancing. The IIvV has a great future before it; although already rich in results, it is still only at the first stage of international collaboration. The wide and varied circles concerned with welding in each country are often exclusively engaged by the need to resolve the immediat e problems ''"ith which the continual expansion of technical necessities presents them. The work of the Institute can only gradu.ally penetrate to this level, since it is in the nature of all movements for cooperation and understanding based on the forces of the spirit to inspire only graduall y confidence and interest in ever widening circles. TJ1e Institute's work is progressing harmoniously; if it continues to work, to follow the sometimes h ard path of cooperation, to make increasingly known its results and the spirit which animates it, it '"ill, as all its members so ardently desire, have a future broader in scope and richer in results. The International Institute is a great institution in the service of progress. The world of welding is its country and its one desire to contribute in increasi ng measure to transforming evolving, and sometimes inchoate, needs, tendencies and ideas, which are influenced by many human factors, into a calm and ordered whole where truth may form the common ground of different ideas and where the technique of welding may draw from an ever deeper understanding its best source of development and progress. The Institute knew that, in grouping so many countries under its flag , it was taking on heavy duties; this volume bears witness to those which it has accomplished during its first decade. But these duties will be still more pressing in the future; the Institute is sure that all those countries which established it and