Delicate Operation

Arthur Koestler's biting description of 20th-century labor leaders--"men with iron wills and wooden heads"--seemed to be inaccurate. At a great Labor conference in Paris last week the iron was highly pliable, the wood intricately grained. Men who claimed to represent 75,000,000 of the world's organized workers negotiated with patience and subtlety until a new entity--W.F.T.U.--was in being.

The World Federation of Trade Unions had gone through its early stages last winter in London and last spring in Oakland, Calif. Finally established last week, it was intended to replace the old I.F.T.U. (International Federation of Trade Unions), which had been the world's principal international labor body since 1903.

The differences were more than alphabetical. Russia, not a member of I.F.T.U., had the biggest bloc of votes in W.F.T.U. For reasons closely connected with this fact, the A.F. of L. stayed with the ghost of the old organization and had no truck with the new one.

Russian and non-Russian Communists alike took a vast interest in the new giant, undoubtedly hoped to find it useful. Nevertheless, W.F.T.U.'s first president turned. out to be British Labor's ultraconservative, Red-hating Sir Walter Citrine. As late as a fortnight ago, Sir Walter still had his doubts about W.F.T.U. But at Paris Russia's Michael P. Tarasov was most conciliatory. Between the Communists and the Citrine group, the C.I.O.'s wily Sidney Hillman threaded a complex skein of compromise.

With the support of France's Leon Jouhaux and Mexico's Vicente LombardoToledano, the conference elected Louis Saillant, French left-wing Resistance leader, as secretary-general to balance Citrine.

The sweetness & light was almost unbelievable. When a reporter who knew his laborites suggested that perhaps Citrine had inspired a recent attack on the C.I.O., Hillman rasped: "That is a vicious, dirty thought, and it could only come from a dirty mind."

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