System; and Louis Bean and V. Frank Coe, Board of Economic Warfare. It being agreed that it was desirable for this Government to proceed with its plans for the creation of an international monetary fund and bank, it was decided at this meeting to establish an interdepartmental subcommittee, which would report to the "Cabinet Committee". This subcommittee, known as the American Technical Committee, held its first meeting on May 28, 1942, under the chairmanship of Harry D. White, who was primarily responsible for the Treasury's work in this field. It was this group that developed the United States proposal for an International Stabilization Fund released to the press on April 7, 1943. In May 1943 the subcommittee was established on a formal basis, pursuant to a memorandum from the President to the Secretary of the Treasury requesting Mr. Morgenthau to establish relationships with other relevant agencies to discuss the matters of a stabilization fund and a bank for reconstruction and development. It then became the American Technical Committee on the Stabilization Fund and the Reconstruction and Development Bank, reporting to the Secretary of the Treasury. Although the interdepartmental structure for consideration of the bank and fund proposals centering in the Treasury Department had no formal relationship with the Advisory Committee structure for postwar preparations in the State Department, there was a significant interlocking of membership in these two groups. Mr. White, chairman of the American Technical Committee, was a member of the Economic Policy Subcommittee and, later, of the Taylor Committee. The State Department was represented on the "Cabinet Committee” at different times by Mr. Acheson, Mr. Berle, and Mr. Pasvolsky, all members of the Taylor Committee, and the latter was also a member of the Technical Committee. Mr. Feis of the Taylor Committee also sometimes attended the "Cabinet Committee" for the Department of State. Mr. Cohen was a member of the Advisory Committee and also of the American Technical Committee. The Department's representation on this latter committee was comprised of officers from both the research staff and the operating divisions, and extensive consideration was given in the Division of Special Research and the subsequent Division of Economic Studies to problems of concern to this committee.28 28 Membership on the American Technical Committee varied from time to time, but the principal attendants, in addition to those mentioned above, were Treasury Department, Elting Arnold, Edward M. Bernstein, Henry J. Bittermann, Ansel F. Luxford, and Raymond F. Mikesell; State Department, William Adams Brown, Jr., E. G. Collado, Frederick Livesey and John Parke Young; Commerce Department, W. L. Clayton, Hal B. Lary, and August Maffry; Federal Reserve Board, Alice Bourneuf, Walter Gardner, E. A. Goldenweiser, and Alvin H. The preparations relating to food and agriculture were also somewhat atypical, though not to the same degree or in exactly the same way. At the first joint meeting of the economic subcommittees on February 20, 1942, the Chairman, Mr. Acheson, had stressed the importance of nutrition problems, but no special consideration was given to these problems at the subsequent meetings. At the second joint meeting on July 17, specific reference was made to the "establishment of international machinery dealing with standards of nutrition and more rational development of food resources" as one of the basic longer-range problems. Again, however, no special consideration was given to this problem by the subcommittees except in connection with the discussions of East European and European economic organization, when the desirability of a regional approach to this problem was questioned. On the day following a conference with Secretary Hull, Under Secretary Welles, and Messrs. Taylor, Bowman, and Pasvolsky, the President at a press conference on February 23, 1943, revealed that plans were being discussed for a United Nations conference that spring to explore long-range and fundamental postwar food problems. The initiative in this move was the President's. The desirability of such a conference had been raised in the Department only a few days before, on the grounds that there was some public feeling that international discussion of postwar problems was being too long delayed and that food was a relatively noncontroversial subject on which to proceed for the first full United Nations Conference at this still exploratory stage. The President was much interested in the nutrition problem and was aware of the ideas in this connection that had been developed unofficially through informal discussions in Washington principally among Americans, Australians, and Canadians. He favored at this time the establishment of entirely separate functional agencies in the economic field and chose food and agriculture as the subject offering V the best chances for immediate success in the first attempt to test the willingness and ability of the United Nations to cooperate on postwar problems. He felt that this test should be made promptly. The preparations for the projected conference were made outside the formal Advisory Committee structure, but there was, as in the case of the preparations in the investment and monetary field, extensive overlapping of officials and experts involved. Mr. Pasvolsky initiated the telegrams that the Secretary sent on March 8 to start the necessary preliminary discussions with the other three major powers, which led to the issuance before the end of the month to all United Hansen; Securities and Exchange Commission, Walter C. Louchheim; ExportImport Bank, Hawthorne Arey and Warren Lee Pierson; Foreign Economic Administration, James W. Angell, and V. Frank Coe. Nations, and nations associated with them, of an invitation to a conference on food and agricultural production. A decision was made at this time not to limit the conference to those governments that had actually signed the Declaration by United Nations but to include those American republics that had yet to sign the Declaration but were assisting in the prosecution of the war against the Axis, and also to include certain other states, namely Egypt, Iceland, Iran, and Liberia, that without having declared war were collaborating with United Nations. This decision was to constitute a precedent for the later UNRRA and Bretton Woods Conferences 29 and was to be followed generally, though with some variation, in all subsequent conferences. Messrs. Emilio Collado (Associate Adviser on International Economic Affairs), Hawkins, and Stinebower were initially charged with responsibility for the preparatory work for the conference. Late in March, Mr. Acheson assumed the active direction of this work, with Mr. Stinebower and Mr. Tolley of the Department of Agriculture serving as his chief deputies. An ad hoc working group composed of representatives from the State and Agriculture Departments was set up to prepare a draft agenda for the conference in collaboration with Judge Jones, Under Secretary of Agriculture Appleby, Assistant Secretary of Commerce Clayton, and Dr. Thomas Parran (Surgeon General, United States Public Health Service). The four latter officials were members of the United States Delegation to the conference. Mr. Stinebower served as Adviser and Executive Secretary to the American Delegation at the conference, and another member of the research staff, Benjamin Gerig, was a member of the conference secretariat. As noted above, Mr. Acheson reported to the Taylor Committee both on the preparations for and the results of the conference. In Mr. Acheson's report to the Taylor Committee on May 7, 1943, he emphasized that no agreements or commitments would be entered into by the delegates to the conference and that their conclusions would take the form of recommendations to their respective governments. The conference was not to consider political questions and was to be primarily of a technical nature. It would have as its purpose to work toward broad objectives and to emphasize the new responsibility of governments to see that their peoples were well fed. This approach, rather than consideration of immediate and specific problems, it was hoped, would avoid the danger of concentration on restrictive commodity schemes. 29 See pp. 203 ff. and 240 ff. 30 Other members of the Delegation were Murray D. Lincoln, Executive Secretary of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, and Miss Josephine Schain. Judge Marvin Jones was Chairman. In keeping with this general plan, the draft agenda developed by the ad hoc working group, which, with very slight modification after consultation with the other participating governments was released as the definitive agenda on April 27, was concerned with the following broad topics: consumption levels and requirements, expansion of production and its adaptation to consumption needs, facilitation and improvement of distribution, and arrangements for continuing and carrying forward the work of the conference. In connection with the last topic, Mr. Acheson explained on May 7 that the conference would consider the problem of establishing a permanent organization to carry out its recommendations and to bring together in one body the dispersed efforts in the agricultural field being made by such agencies as the International Institute of Agriculture at Rome, the League of Nations, and the ILO. He also explained that the question of distribution would be considered in relation to the broad economic problems of stabilization, investment, and trade barriers as well as from a more technical and specialized standpoint. Mr. Acheson's report to the Taylor Committee on the results of the conference was made on June 4. He termed it a success and described its discussions as being of a high level and the work of its technical secretariat outstanding. He noted, in summarizing the conference recommendations, that it was felt that after the war, agricultural policies of an expansionist, as contrasted with a restrictive, character would only be possible if international security were assured, since otherwise efforts to gain self-sufficiency would lead again to restrictions. He also noted that the conference, in addition to projecting a permanent organization in the food and agriculture field, had believed that there should be an international body authorized to initiate or review international commodity agreements.1 The conference provided for the establishment of an Interim Commission to continue the progress begun at Hot Springs, including the preparation of a basic plan for a permanent organization in this field. Primary responsibility for maintaining relations with the commission was vested in the Department of Agriculture, but the Department of State continued to be actively interested in various aspects of the work, particularly that relating to the plan for a permanent organization. An interdepartmental advisory group was established to carry forward American participation in this work. This group was composed of Mr. Appleby, who was the only American member of the commission, Mr. Clayton (who had assumed the chairmanship of one of the special committees of the Taylor Committee in June), Dr. Parran, and Mr. Acheson, with Mr. Stinebower acting as his alternate. "For the text of the Final Act of the Conference, see Department of State Bulletin, VIII, 546–72. THE SPECIAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON PROBLEMS OF DURING the first year of the Advisory Committee, a substantial number of ideas were developed by Europeans and projected variously by Americans for regional groupings of European states or at least regional arrangements for economic cooperation. The Greek-Yugoslav Agreement of January 15, 1942, and the Polish-Czechoslovak Committee of Coordination of June 10, 1942, were directed toward this end, as were various statements by responsible leaders of several other governments during 1942 and early 1943. In this period proposals also emerged for a political organization covering Europe as a whole, and as noted above, a regional basis for general international organization was advocated by Prime Minister Churchill in his radio address of March 21, 1943, and privately. These proposals were the subject of much study in and out of the Government, especially by the standing subcommittees. At the same time, the exchanges proceeding in the period February to April 1943 between the Soviet Union and Poland, marked by strong differences of view over Poland's eastern boundaries, raised additional questions affecting the whole matter of regional developments in Europe. The decision to establish a Special Subcommittee on Problems of European Organization was reached gradually during April and May 1943. This subcommittee was to study the converging territorial and economic questions of regional organization, especially with regard to Europe, in order to clarify the alternative policy choices presented the United States with respect to regional developments in that area. Primary attention was given to economic organization, but the subcommittee from the outset pursued a program of discussion and research designed to explore every major aspect of European regional organizations and related problems. Preliminary informal meetings between the Chairman, Hamilton Fish Armstrong, and officers of the economic and political research staffs began on May 24. The first task was to determine the feasibility of specific groupings and various types of European regional arrangements that had been, or might be, projected. In addition, it was necessary to analyze the possible economic and political functions of such regional arrangements and to weigh the effects on American interests that would flow from the development of such structures. This period, as will be recalled, was one of uncertainty regarding the further course of the war and the territorial conditions at its conclusion and regarding the course of postwar policy that the American people and the Congress would support. Within the Advisory Committee there was still a great degree of uncertainty on most controversial |