Gaston at Geneva

The sun was bright, and distant Mont Blanc was clearly visible to the delegates in Geneva last week. They were in town for the long-awaited International Trade Organization preparatory conference on breaking down trade barriers. Inside the huge Palais des Nations, the visibility was much lower. A procedural matter got the Americans and the British snarled up right away.

The Americans thought that each of the 18 delegations should lay its bargaining schedules (its demands and proposed concessions) on the table for everybody to see. The British said that such facts & figures should be unveiled only in the privacy of the nation-by-nation dickerings which will characterize the first conference stage. The British had a point, because several delegations were giving a beautiful imitation of Alphonse & Gaston--holding out their own bids & asks until they saw the other fellow's schedules. But, most awkwardly, the opening snarl reminded everybody of the ubiquitous bilateralism that Geneva was supposed to suppress--in favor of freer multilateral trade in a world atmosphere of multilateral confidence.

While Geneva Gastons waited for facts, figures, and brass-tack concessions, delegates aired a show-me attitude toward U.S. willingness to buy from the world as much as she sold to the world. Dr. J. E. Holloway, head of the delegation from the Union of South Africa, was hopeful but skeptical. Said he: "[America] will, I hope, forgive us some little anxiety. She stands at the crossroads where her traditional antipathy to the free flow of international trade diverges from her new role as world leader. She seems to stand there in vacillating acceptance of her eminent and high destiny. The U.S. is in a strategic position to lead the world into the calm meadows of economic peace and prosperity."

Last week Geneva could see more mountains than meadows.

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