The organisation [the League of Nations] lingered on and, with a final irony, it was now that it assumed the outward shape that is generally associated with it. The Palace of Nations [Wiki], begun in 1929, was finished in 1936, just in time to become a mausoleum. Here at last were the necessary offices, 700 of them, and the fitting conference rooms for the words that no longer meant anything. There was a floor of Finnish granite, walls and pillars faced with Swedish marble, enigmatic and forbidding murals, depicting Technical Progress, Medical Progress, Social Progress, the Abolition of War, and so on, by the Catalan artist Jose Maria Sert. Under their sombre painted sermons, the Assemblies still met and passed their resolutions; everyone was still very busy. But underneath it all the mainspring was broken.
John Terraine, The Mighty Continent, 1974, quoted by Brian Micklethwait, 2021-07-20.
