Breath of Life

A 19-car special train last week backed into geranium-decked Union Station at Savannah, Ga. Out piled delegates from 34 member nations of the Bretton Woods Fund and Bank. The town, still smarting from Lady Astor's recent wisecrack (see PEOPLE) had washed its face for the occasion, turned out en masse to cheer the delegates.

In the General Oglethorpe Hotel, amid the pines and palmettos on nearby Wilmington Island, the delegates turned to the immediate business of choosing a permanent site for the Fund and Bank, adopting bylaws, electing directors, deciding how new members may join.

Chief among the prospective candidates was Russia. Still declining to commit herself to the world economic program fostered by the U.S., Russia decided at the last minute to send an observer. Moscow knew she must join Bretton Woods before she could get a billion-dollar U.S. loan.

To nations hungry for funds to rebuild their war-ravaged economies, Bretton Woods had become more important than ever. The Netherlands, France, Czechoslovakia and China were expected to request loans at the present session.

President Truman sent a message to Savannah calling on the delegates to "breathe life" into the infant organizations. But monetary experts are not notably lively or gregarious. Spanish-speaking Negro bellboy Ben White introduced the lonely first-comer, Bolivia's Dr. Franklin Antezana Paz, to the lonely second-comer, Arturo Maschke Tornero of Chile. The two Latins warmly embraced. Latin American delegations were soon buzzing that they, as much as the war-scarred nations of Europe, expect a good slice of Bank funds for industrial development.

At the spot where James Edward Oglethorpe's debtors found surcease in 1733, unprecedented debts were getting ready to be born.

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