and he dedicated most of his activity to preserving peace . On July 7 , 1938 , he wrote to Brother Cock about the situation of the ULF in Belgium :
Like me , you have received an issue of the Herald of the ULF . Is there truly nothing to be done with our brothers to keep it alive and , as needed , gain new members ? [ ... ] I know that it is much weakened , and it has had little success in Belgium .
In the same letter , he mentions the expensive dues , the cost of transportation , and the absence of a regular organ , but he aimed to overcome these circumstances :
Does all that justify abandoning an action that becomes more imperative with each passing day ? That is where the problem lies , not only for us , but for every willing man and we are , or at least we claim to be , willing men .
The imperative action was that of preserving peace . A few weeks later , on August 19 – 21 , a new ULF congress was held in Thun , Switzerland with only one item on the agenda ( and only fifty brothers present ): “ Freemasonry facing the problems of today ,” based on reports from Brothers Inhof ( Switzerland ), Junod ( Netherlands ), and Chadirat ( France ). The minutes that appeared a few weeks later in La Chaîne d ’ Union stated :
It was interesting to observe that , with no prior concertation , the three orators reached similar
Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
62 conclusions . The subject proposed left little room for debate ; everyone was in agreement .
But no more is known , and the review did not provide its readers with any passages from these reports , nor the resolution that must have been adopted by the congress participants ...
La Fontaine did not travel to Thun . On the eve of the Congress , he wrote to one of his brothers :
I would have liked to repeat to you what I told you in September 1935 during the session that was held in Brussels . Rereading the speech I made to you , I had to recognize that nothing of what I considered to be the essential duty of Freemasonry in our already unhinged world had been accomplished . [ ... ] How many of you will there be in the beautiful town of Thun of which I have unforgettable memories , and what more can you say than what has already been repeated everywhere , without any of the echoes responding to the poignant appeals that have been made ?
Even La Fontaine was starting to have doubts . The final meeting of the ULF before the Second World War took place in Amsterdam on August 26 – 27 , 1939 . From this congress , we only have the invitation sent in every direction by the ULF . It was a call to come to Amsterdam to “ realize what international Freemasonry still means , even under the difficult circumstances of the moment .” The congress was held under