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The World Bank and the Stabilization Fund, twin babes of Bretton Woods, last week pulled on their long pants.

In barren quarters in a Washington office building on H Street that had no rugs, no safe and only borrowed furniture, the executive directors of the bank held their first meeting. Diplomatically, the U.S. informed them that it has not yet selected the Bank's president. What this meant was that President Truman has not yet got a yes from his latest candidate for the job, Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal.

Jimmy Forrestal, whose 22 years in Wall Street, including three as president of Dillon, Read & Co., had given him the financial know-how for the $30,000 a year job, had been offered it last week. (Onetime U.S. Budget Director Lewis W. Douglas had turned it down.) Although Forrestal was mumchance, one sage Washington dopester said: "It's as sure as anything can be these days that Jimmy will take the job."

Job to Do. After it gets its president, the next job of the Bank will be to decide on how it will float the securities which are expected to supply a large part of the $8.8 billion which the Bank will raise for reconstruction loans. The Bank is not expected to lend directly from its own funds; it hasn't enough money. (Only $750,000 of the amount subscribed by 38 countries has been paid in so far.) So it can either buy foreign bonds--e.g., Czech bonds--and sell an equal amount of its own bonds to the world or it can underwrite foreign bonds--i.e., sell them direct to the public but guarantee them.

The Bank would like to sell its bonds both to private investors and banks, insurance companies, trust companies, etc. But it has already found that in the U.S., the principal market, many states have laws prohibiting the sale of such securities. The Bank hopes to have these laws changed. The Savings Bank Association of New York has already had the New York state law amended to permit savings banks to invest in World Bank securities.

A Job Is Filled. In a parlor of the Washington Hotel, the Stabilization Fund also held its first meeting last week. (Shortly, it will move into offices adjoining the bank.) First business was to elect Belgium's Camille Gutt (pronounced gut) the $30,000-a-year managing director --and half the Bank-Fund team. A small man with arched eyebrows and an engagingly informal manner, he has proved to be a financial wizard.

In World War I he served two years with the Spahis Algeriens, then served with the Belgian War Purchasing Commission in London. (To do so, he learned English in 15 days.) After that he served on a dozen government missions, became vice president of the Ford Motor Co. of Belgium and, in 1939, Belgium's Finance Minister. When Belgium fell, he was the first Minister to arrive in London, just before the heavy air raids started. By that time he held the portfolios of finance, war, navy, economic affairs in the government-in-exile.

When Belgium was freed, he was one of the first back. As Finance Minister he put through the unpopular but very successful decrees which took the wind out of Belgium's inflation (TIME, Nov. 6, 1944) and started the nation on the road to recovery months ahead of any other European country.

He looked like just the sort of strong-willed and hard-headed man to run the Fund with the firm, shrewd hand it needed. As to when the Fund would be ready to begin its currency stabilizing job, Gutt did not say. Washington guessed it would not be until October.

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