Mr. WILCOX. At that time Mr. Hull introduced a resolution. [reading]:

That the President be requested to propose to the governments of all commercial nations that at the close of the present European war an international trade conference shall be held in the city of Washington for the purpose of establishing a permanent international trade agreement congress, the function and duty of such congress to comprise the consideration of all international trade methods, practices, and policies which in their effects are reasonably calculated to create dangerous and destructive commercial controversies or bitter economic wars and to formulate treaty agreements with respect thereto, designed to eliminate, prevent, and avoid the injurious results and dangerous possibilities of economic warfare and to promote fair and friendly trade relations among all the nations of the world.

Then, in the Congressional Record for December 21, 1925, Mr. Hull was speaking of the British rubber agreement and in the course of that discussion, he said [reading]:

I have for several years been offering the suggestion of an international trade organization in the form of a resolution, sometimes by itself and sometimes in conjunction with other proposals. This is the third remedy that is open to this country

in connection with the problem he had been discussing—

which is an international trade organization to take up the more rank discriminations and the more unfair trade practices, such as those now under consideration, and by mutual agreement permanently to eliminate, abandon, and abolish that kind of conduct. This policy is sound, timely, and feasible, and had it been in operation since 1922, we would not now be subjected to this hold-up. It would have been avoided.

Then, Mr. Hull made a statement on December 7, 1945, one paragraph of which follows [reading]:

Over a period of some three decades I have pointed out that the world needs an international organization for promoting, on a sound and nondiscriminatory basis, mutually profitably trade among all nations, and for preventing economic warfare which so often leads to physical combat. Unfortunately, in the interval between the two wars, the world followed down the road of destructive commercial conflict.

I should like, if I may, briefly to indicate the later official documents in their chronological sequence that give the background of this proposal. I shall not take the time of the committee to read from them in detail, but merely to identify them.

The CHAIRMAN. Before you do that, who has been the major draftsman and originator of the charter which is before us?

Mr. WILCOX. I think it would be difficult to answer that question in terms of any individual.

The work on the charter, the actual work on the development of the proposals and the subsequent charter has been carried on by a series of interdepartmental committees on which has been represented the Departments of State, Treasury, Commerce, Agriculture, the Tariff Commission, the Department of Labor, and on some of them the Department of Justice and other agencies of the Government. The CHAIRMAN. Who was the spark plug?

Mr. WILCOX. They have functioned successively under the chairmanship of Mr. Myron Taylor, Mr. Dean Acheson, and William L. Clayton.

The CHAIRMAN. Who developed the outlines and who indicated to these working committees the subjects they were to work on?

60316-47-pt. 1-4

I mean, it is perfectly evident, Doctor, that you cannot take a charter like this and just have it originate by spontaneous combustion. Someone has spearhheaded it and had the over-all idea. Someone has had an agenda of work, someone has had the scheme, and who was that?

Mr. WILCOX. This work was begun in 1942, I believe actively in 1943. It had been under way for 2 years when I came into the Department. I would be unable to put my finger on one man and say, "This is his idea."

I think it would be possible by going back over the minutes of these committees to reconstruct a historical statement in answer to that question.

The CHAIRMAN. I see the repetition of a statement through the literature that a group of experts did the job but it is always cloaked in anonymity, we are not given much of a picture as to the personnel involved.

Are you content to leave the matter that way or do you wish to give us some personalities who have spearheaded this thing, who have had something to do with the basic conceptions of the charter?

Mr. WILCOX. Well, if all of the names of the people involved were to be listed, it would run into, I suppose, hundreds who have participated in these various committees at these various times. The responsibility has been successively, I believe, that of Mr. Taylor, Mr. Acheson, and Mr. Clayton.

The CHAIRMAN. Who have been the acting men immediately under them?

Mr. WILCOX. I cannot tell you offhand who the people would have been previous to my participation in the work.

Mr. Hawkins, who is now our Minister to London, was one of my predecessors in the office I now occupy and he participated.

My immediate predecessor was Mr. Bernard Haley, and I followed in this office, but this has never been an enterprise exclusively of the State Department.

The CHAIRMAN. All that I am driving at is that someone at some time must have taken the dream of Mr. Hull and formulized it and distributed it around for somebody to do some work on it.

Can we identify that person?

Mr. WILCOX. As far as I know, Mr. Chairman, we cannot do that. any more than we can say who invented the automobile.

The CHAIRMAN. This, then, is a sort of spontaneous combustion among experts and technicians in the State Department?

Mr. WILCOX. No, sir; not in the State Department.

This has always been a development through the structure of interdepartmental committees. There were subcommittees also.

Since 1944 the top committee has been the Executive Committee on Economic Foreign Policy under the chairmanship first of Mr. Acheson, and then of Mr. Clayton.

There have been subcommittees on each of the particular problems that are taken up in the charter-on commercial policy, on restrictive business practices, on commodity policy, on organization, and

so on.

The recommendations of those subcommittees have gone to the executive committee for examination and final action and that is the

way the original proposals were constructed, and that is the way in which the draft of the charter which amplified those proposals was developed.

The CHAIRMAN. Who were the leaders, who assigned the work? The subcommittee does not generate itself and start doing something. Somebody else tells it to go to work along some kind of predetermined line.

Mr. WILCOX. Well, the executive committee set up the subcommittees, voted on their terms of reference, and thereby gave them their assignment.

The CHAIRMAN. Who was on the executive committee?

Mr. WILCOX. The executive committee has had members from the departments I named. The membership over a period of 5 years has been a changing one.

The CHAIRMAN. And who is the director general or the spark plug, as I said, that touched off the executive committee?

Mr. WILCOX. Well, the chairman of the executive committee has been most recently Mr. Clayton, and the secretary was Mr. Robert Carr. He handled the secretariat of the committee.

Senator BREWSTER. I think we may be approaching this on a simple and countryside way. It may be modesty on the part of the witness or concern whether internal jealousies might arise if he mentioned

names.

Are the minutes of these meetings available?

Mr. WILCOX. We could prepare a list.

Senator BREWSTER. I am asking you whether there are minutes of all these meetings?

Mr. WILCOX. Yes, sir.

Senator BREWSTER. Would they be available to the committee or representatives of the committee for study?

Mr. WILCOX. Yes, sir.

Senator BREWSTER. I think if you would have competent gentlemen look those over, you would discover who was the spark plug, but I think that is the only satisfactory way you can get a solution to this $64 question.

The CHAIRMAN. I rather expected that Dr. Wilcox would put the crown on himself.

Mr. WILCOX. Mr. Chairman, this project was under way from 1942 in detailed preparation for 3 years before I joined the Department of State or had anything to do with it.

Senator JOHNSON of Colorado. Was Mr. Clayton in the Department when you came in? He came in in 1945, did he not?

Mr. WILCOX. He invited me into the Department.

Senator JOHNSON of Colorado. How long had he been in there before he issued you that invitation?

Mr. WILCOX. Well, a number of months, I cannot tell you exactly. Senator JOHNSON of Colorado. It must have been in 1945, was it not?

Mr. WILCOX. I do not know the precise date.

Senator JOHNSON. When did you come in?

Mr. WILCOX. I came in in March of 1945. I do not know the precise date when Mr. Clayton came.

Senator JOHNSON. But it must have been in 1945.

Mr. WILCOX. I am not sure. It may have been late 1944.

Senator JOHNSON. It is not important except that Mr. Clayton came into the picture long after it was initiated and he could not have been one of the originators?

Mr. WILCOX. That is right.

Senator JOHNSON. He could not have been the spark plug.

Mr. WILCOX. He is now. I think it is possible to give you a list of all of the committees that have worked on this, all of the members, and who has been the chairman, and who have been the members of each of these committees all the time and in addition all of the minutes of these committees.

The CHAIRMAN. That list would not be relevant. So far as I am concerned, we will let the matter rest in anonymity.

Mr. WILCOX. May I suggest that if you were to put a man to work on examining the minutes of these committees, I do not believe that you would come out with a single person to whom you could attribute predominant responsibilty for the development of the charter.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not want to go deeply into it, but are there any historic precedents for this sort of organization?

Mr. WILCOX. Well, I think similar work was done through committees in the original development of the product of the United Nations Charter. I was not in the Department at the time, but I believe that the structure was a committee on political organization and a commitee on economic organization.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not believe I made myself clear.

Is there any precedent for an operating organization similar to the one proposed in the charter we are considering?

Has the world ever known anything of that kind before?

Mr. WILCOX. Similar to the International Trade Organization? The CHAIRMAN. Yes.

Mr. WILCOX. Why yes, I should say so. There is the International Bank, there is the International Monetary Fund, and there is the Provisional Civil Aviation Organization.

The CHAIRMAN. Was there ever an international organization similar to this one, the proposed International Trade Organization?

Mr. WILCOX. Well, they operate in different fields from this one. The CHAIRMAN. I understand that.

Has the world ever known an organization similar to the one which we are considering here, the proposed International Trade Organization?

Mr. WILCOX. There has never been such an organization in the field of international commercial policy, no, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You had some matters you wished to develop; will you proceed with them?

Mr. WILCOX. I merely wished to present for the record the historical sequence of documents on the trade organization.

The first is the reference in the fourth point of the Atlantic Charter, dated August 14, 1941.

The second is article 7 of the mutual aid, lend-lease, agreement signed in February 1942.

The third is the statement of purposes in the articles of agreement of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank.

Senator BREWSTER. Doctor, is it the idea to put these in the record? Mr. WILCOX. I have marked relevant passages.

Senator BREWSTER. Are they very extended? Could you read them so they would be in the record at this point? I am interested in your approach.

Mr. WILCOX. I could do so.

The CHAIRMAN. I think it would be a good idea because if you do not, I had intended to put the relevant excerpts in myself. Mr. WILCOX. All right, I should be very glad to do so.

The fourth paragraph of the Atlantic Charter reads as follows:

They

that is, the Governments of the United States and United Kingdomwill endeavor with due respect for their existing obligations to further the enjoyment by all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity.

Senator LUCAS. What is the date of that?

Mr. WILCOX. That is August 14, 1941.

Senator BREWSTER. What validity do you concede that has at this time?

Mr. WILCOX. I am presenting it merely as an indication of the origin, the historical origin, of an international trade organization. Senator BREWSTER. You are of the belief that that was in a sense when it was conceived?

Mr. WILCOX. I should say so.

Apparently Mr. Hull had the idea much earlier than this.

Senator BREWSTER. Did the other countries subsequently subscribe to that?

I am asking that to reflect my recollection. Did Russia, China, and France ultimately subscribe?

Mr. WILCOX. The United States of America, the United Kingdom, Russia, Canada, Costa Rica, and so forth. It is a long list.

Senator BREWSTER. They all subscribed to that statement of principles subsequently?

Mr. WILCOX. That is right.

Senator BREWSTER. Was there not some statement later that it was merely a scrap of paper and that it did not really exist?

I do not want to take too much time on this.

Mr. WILCOX. That may have been said. There is a printed text here issued by the Government in 1942, by the Government Printing Office. Senator BREWSTER. Do you recall the episode I refer to when it was indicated that this was not really in the nature of an agreement but was merely a matter of conversation?

Mr. WILCOX. No, sir, I do not.

There is a text to which these governments have subscribed.

Senator BREWSTER. An official document in our archives showing their subscribing to this document?

Mr. WILCOX. I would assume that there must be.

Senator BREWSTER. I would be glad if you would check that and if your statement is not correct, let us know.

Mr. WILCOX. All right.