Extracts [NEW YORK, June 1947] [1]

CONFIDENTIAL

UNITED NATIONS
ECONOMIC AND EMPLOYMENT COMMISSION
SECOND SESSION JUNE 2-17, 1947

Report by the Australian Alternate

1. The official report to the Council [2] on the Second Session
was approved by the Commission, and is accurate so far as it goes.

I believe that the decisions taken were generally in accord with
Australian interests. This report does not cover matters
adequately treated in the official report, but rather those that,
in the nature of things, could not be said officially.

SUMMARY

2. The Commission elected its sub-commissions on Employment and
Economic Stability and Economic Development (including L. G.

Melville [3] on the former) and considered three matters on
instruction from the Economic and Social Council:

(a) On economic stability and full employment it passed a pious
resolution in effect asking the U.S. to keep on importing and
lending, and the devastated countries to work harder. The long-
term aspects were passed over to the Sub-Commission for report
back in February, 1948.

(b) On economic development there was an inconclusive discussion
and the whole matter was passed over to the Sub-Commission for
report back in February, 1948.

(c) On regular reports to the Council on world economic conditions
and trends, the Secretariat was asked to present a summary to each
session of the Council as soon as possible. Technical discussion
of the nature of contents was left to the Sub-Commission.

Broadly the Commission failed to make a successful transition from
procedural to real work. This might be improved slowly by nations
changing the type of their representation and by the Secretariat
undertaking more adequate preparation together with the
Specialized Agencies. This involves more staff and more funds.

Even if these things are done the Commission will not fulfil the
possibilities that exist for fostering full employment through
international economic collaboration. It therefore needs
supplementing by additional consultations within the British
Commonwealth and with the U.S., and possibly with other countries
of Northern and Western Europe.

GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE WEAKNESS OF THE COMMISSION

This Commission is generally regarded as the most important of the
functional commissions of the Economic and Social Council as its
terms of reference require it to coordinate economic aspects of
the work of other Commissions and Specialized Agencies. It was
also the first ESC commission to hold a second session and thus
face the most difficult stage of its growth, when it has to go
beyond procedural matters (to which all can contribute) and lay
the basis for real achievements. In general the Commission failed
to rise to this opportunity. An analysis of the failure may help
us to improve the economic work of the United Nations and its
Specialized Agencies in the future.

The Members did not represent the appropriate activities of their
Governments

5. It should be the function of this Commission to bring together
Government representatives concerned with economic planning in
their respective countries, so that the Commission could be a
centre for harmonising the international relations of national
economic policies as far as possible. Out of 15 member nations, 5
have chosen representatives whose permanent position fits them for
this task; they are the U.K., whose representative, R.L. Hall, is
becoming head of the Cabinet Economic Offices, Australia, Canada
(Mr. Deutsch is Director of Economic Relations in the Department
of Finance) and China and Poland whose representatives are Deputy
Directors of their country's central planning boards. [4] It is
very unfortunate that the U.S.A. does not fall in this list. Her
representative, Dr. I. Lubin, as a prominent Roosevelt man is
drifting further away from his Government, is connected with the
Americans for Democratic Action movement, and earns his living as
economic adviser to 10 motion-picture corporations. At this
Session he sometimes disregarded the advice of his senior adviser
from the State Department.

Norway and France come reasonably close to what is desired with
teaching or research economists who also advise their Governments.

6. The representatives of Czechoslovakia and India come from the
Economic Division of their Foreign Affairs Departments and this is
approximately the position of the representative of Brazil
(Guimaraes) who as head of the Research Department of the Bank of
Brazil attends many international economic conferences for his
Government.

7. The members for the U.S.S.R., Byelorussia, Belgium, and Cuba,
are permanent representatives to the United Nations, mostly with a
background in the economic work of their foreign affairs
departments. Permanent U.N. representatives cannot provide
effective discussion and coordination of matters so closely
concerned with domestic affairs (though it is useful to have on
the Commission people who are accustomed to U.N. procedures).

Composed so heterogeneously and with so many alternates, the
Commission seemed incapable of discussing other than trivial
matters. None of the four papers presented by members, the two by
the Secretariat, and the many presented by the Specialized
Agencies provoked any discussion.

8. Possible Remedies

(a) So far as membership of the Commission is concerned an
opportunity could be made when the Economic and Social Council is
proceeding to the election of members of the Economic and
Employment Commission to discuss the type of representative
wanted. The Economic and Employment Commission had a very useful
discussion of this nature before proceeding to the election of its
sub-commissions.

(b) Even if governments chose the right representatives, national
economies are too dissimilar and the ways of thought of their
representatives too far apart for effective collaboration in
achieving full employment in an organisation representing the
whole world. The problem is how those who have similar economies
and a similar sense of business can get together without giving a
set-back to the development of wider collaboration through the
United Nations.

Obviously the British Commonwealth could get together without
adverse comment, and the exchange of staff between Australia and
the U.K. Cabinet Economic Offices may naturally lead to closer
collaboration on policy. U.K.'s R.L. Hall is thinking of visiting
the U.S. regularly for consultations with them.

Others who might be of like mind are Scandinavia and the Low
Countries and France. Hall asked privately whether Canberra would
think all these should get together. This is a very tentative idea
owing to the difficulties of expanding official consultations
beyond the British Commonwealth and outside the U.N. On the other
hand, bilateral conversations through diplomatic representatives
not intimately concerned with these matters would not be likely to
achieve the purpose.

[matter omitted]

Regular Reports on World Economic Conditions and Trends

32. I put in a paper (E/CN 1/39) in an attempt to get the
Commission down to practical details but it suffered the common
fate of not being discussed. The Commission was equally supine,
however, when I had voted into the appropriate sections of the
report a few sentences promising us what we want as soon as the
Secretariat has the staff to do it (including the sentence 'in
particular the Commission hopes that the Secretariat will soon be
in a position to place before the Council at each Session a
summary of current conditions and trends for the Council's
information in dealing with particular issues of economic
importance on its agenda'). [5]

[matter omitted]