In the past few months the attitudes of France toward Western European unity have been undergoing a perceptible change. Initiative, imagination, and drive have given way to hesitancy, skepticism, and even withdrawal. The change was placed in dramatic focus by the coincidence of the formal opening of the coal and steel pool, which owes its existence in large part to the work of the two Frenchmen, Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, at the very time the newly created Mayer government was communicating to other interested states its reservations regarding the European Defense Community Treaty, for which French effort is also in large part responsible.

The problem of security (“a feeling of safety, whether founded on fact or delusion”, “freedom from danger, care or anxiety”) is inevitably seen in different perspective from Washington and Hanoi, from Canberra and Tokyo, from New Delhi, Singapore, Djakarta and Peking. It is at once global and regional; it assumes different proportions when viewed by the Burman rice coolie and the Japanese factory worker, the Californian industrialist and the Malayan rubber planter, the Melbourne factory worker and the Whitehall administrator.

If there is truth in the assertion that the strength of the United Nations depends upon the support of public opinion within member states, the responsibility of those organs of the United Nations which supervise public information activities of the Secretariat is an important one. To those concerned with the future of international organization an analysis of the scope and limitations of the information programs which have developed in the first six years of the history of the United Nations should be of primary value. What are the problems which national delegates to the United Nations face in making decisions about the way in which an international secretariat should attempt to influence public opinion? What is the process by which such decisions are made in the administrative framework of the United Nations and the Specialized Agencies? What outcomes in terms of increased international cooperation can be expected from the information activities of United Nations Secretariat?

The seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly was resumed on February 24, 1953; the following summary contains information on the activities of the Assembly from this date through April 1, 1953, when the Assembly again recessed for Easter.

The following summary covers the activities of the Security Council from its 605th on October 10, 1952, through the 611th meeting on December 23, in addition to unofficial information concerning closed meetings of the Council in March 1953, to consider a recommendation for Secretary-General. During this period, the following representatives were chairmen of the Council: October, Chile (Santa Cruz); November, China (Tsiang); December, France (Hoppenot); January, Greece (Kyrou); February, Lebanon (Malik); and March, Pakistan (Bokhari).

Ad Hoc Committee on Forced Labor: Following the practice adopted at its first session, the second and third sessions of the Ad Hoc Committee on Forced Labor were held in private; Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar (India) served as chairman and rapporteur for both sessions. The principal item on the agenda of the second session – New York, June 2–July 1, 1952 – was the study of replies of governments to the questionnaire submitted after the first session and of documentation submitted by the Secretariat and non-governmental organizations. Replies had been received from 42 states and 16 non-governmental organizations. The committee decided to extend from March 31, 1952, to June 15, 1952 the time limit for reception of material or requests for hearings and later decided to interpret this limitation flexibly, especially if the evidence offered aimed at rebutting other evidence before the committee. Requests for hearings were granted to the Association of Former Political Prisoners of Soviet Labour Camps, Council of Free Czechoslovakia, Estonian Consultative Panel, Hungarian National Council, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, International League for the Rights of Man, Latvian Consultative Panel, Lithuanian Consultative Panel, National Committee for a Free Europe, and the Rumanian National Committee. The committee authorized its chairman to prepare letters, for consideration at a later session, informing individual governments of the allegations made against them.

Net income of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the six months ending December 31, 1952, was $7,639,743, compared with $8,071,486 for the same period of 1951; gross income, exclusive of loan commissions, was $20,696,715. Loan commissions totaling $4,536,682 were credited to the Special Reserve, increasing it to $32,221,336; the addition of net income to the Supplemental Reserve Against Losses on Loans and Guarantees brought the total of that reserve to $65,667,843. On December 31, 1952, total reserves of the Bank were $97,889,179.

A special session of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization opened in Montreal, January 13, 1953, to give further consideration to the dispute between India and Pakistan over air routes between India and Afghanistan. The working group composed of representatives of Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark and Mexico which had been appointed at the seventh session of the Council, began meeting on November 19 and recommended that negotiations between the disputants be continued. On January 19, 1953, the President of the Council (Warner) announced the amicable settlement of the dispute by an agreement which would permit Indian civil aircraft to fly over Pakistani territory to Kabul, Afghanistan, through two 20-mile wide corridors without having to follow the lengthy detour previously necessary. The government of Pakistan also agreed to permit the export of sufficient fuel to Afghanistan by overland routes through Pakistan to permit Indian aircraft to refuel there.

The Governing Body of the International Labor Organization held its 121st session in Geneva from March 3–6, 1953, and approved a net expenditure of $6,311,368 for 1954, $88,000 more than for 1953. Czechoslovakia was requested to agree that a complaint against that government be referred to the ILO Fact-Finding and Conciliation Commission on Freedom of Association; Czechoslovakia was asked to reply before the next session of the Governing Body on May 29, 1953. Consideration of a report of a special sub-committee established in 1952 to review the activities of the industrial committee was postponed; however, the Governing Body did take note of the report of its Technical Assistance Committee and the several industrial committees.

By the end of August 1952, the total exchange transactions of the International Monetary Fund were $892,408,380; repurchases in gold and United States dollars totaled $184,693,538. A repurchase payment of $27,121,500 was received from the Netherlands, subject to the receipt of further data on the Netherlands' monetary reserve. Brazil repurchased $25.5 million in August and $18.75 million in February, 1953, making its total repurchase since June 1952, $84.25 million.

The Ad Hoc Committee for Intersessional Business established by the parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade met in Geneva from February 2, 1953 to consider Japan's request to become a contracting party. On February 15, it was provisionally agreed that no special modifications or additions to the agreement would be necessary to incorporate Japan. The committee recommended that speedy procedures for granting relief be provided should the admission of Japan have any of the “unfortunate consequences” some members were reported to foresee. Such a procedure, the committee pointed out, was provided in Article 23 of the agreement by which any party could be relieved from the obligation to refrain from discriminating against another party if the contracting parties as a group decided that such relief would further the general objectives of the agreement.

The seventh session of the General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization was held in Paris from November 12 through December 11, 1952. Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (India) was elected president of the session; on November 24, the Conference elected S. M. Sharif (Pakistan) to serve as acting president when Sir Sarvepalli was recalled to India.

The Executive Board of the World Health Organization held its eleventh session in Geneva, January 12–February 4, 1953, and nominated Dr. G. M. Candau of Brazil to succeed Dr. Brock Chisholm as Director-General when the latter's term expired in July; final action on the appointment of a new Director-General, as well as on other board recommendations, was to be taken by the WHO Assembly at the session scheduled to open on May 5. In connection with the participation of WHO in the United Nations technical assistance program, the board considered the effects of possible cuts in WHO's share of available funds. The Chairman (Jafar) noted that “health has been given a ‘back number’ in the sphere of socio-economic development”. He noted that total technical aid funds committed by WHO for the current year totaled nearly $10 million; to inform participating governments and organizations that WHO could no longer meet its commitments, Mr. Jafar continued, “will mean a reversal of policy which has encouraged national governments a great deal so far”. Other points emphasized by the board were: 1) that health projects required long forward planning on the parts of WHO and the governments concerned; 2) that the technical assistance program was one of the most important developments of the century and had been received everywhere with approval; 3) that rigid priorities for health programs were impossible since each government had to determine for itself what schemes were needed to develop its own health services; 4) that continued long-term planning would be needed in order to allow the Technical Assistance Board to know what funds would be received; 5) that reduction of administrative machinery was necessary; and 6) that in 30 months of technical assistance, WHO had received about $3 million in 1951 and $5.5 million in 1952.

The Political Committee of the Arab League met in Cairo beginning December 20, 1952, under the chairmanship of Fathy Radwan (Egypt) to discuss questions relating to Palestine and north Africa. On December 25, the committee issued a statement approving the failure of passage in the United Nations General Assembly of the resolution adopted by the Ad Hoc Political Committee calling for direct negotiations between Israel and the Arab states. The committee condemned “the mere idea of an invitation to Arabs to negotiate with the Israelis” and expressed the hope “that there would be no repetition of these attempts”.

An informal meeting of the Consultative Council of the Brussels Treaty Organization was held in Paris, December 15, 1952. The foreign ministers of Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands and United Kingdom reviewed the activities of the Permanent Commission and the work undertaken by the organization in social, cultural and civil defense matters since the last meeting of the Council in November 1951.

An extraordinary session of the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe was held in Strasbourg from January 14–17, 1953. The major item of discussion during the session was the statute of a European political community.

The headquarters of NATO, on March 12, 1953, published figures showing the defense expenditures of thirteen member countries during the last four years, while the Secretary-General (Ismay) stated in Washington, D.C., that from the year 1949–50 to the current year defense expenditures in the European NATO countries had increased by 120 percent.

Annual Report: The fourth annual report of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation, which was approved by the Council of Ministers on December 12, 1952, differed from previous reports in that in its preparation the United States and Canada played parts entirely similar to those of member countries and that the recommendations made applied equally to west Europe and North America. The current situation was regarded as unsatisfactory: production in west Europe was either not rising or rising very slightly; inflationary tendencies in some countries and deflationary pressures in others stood in the way of stable development; several OEEC members still suffered from balance of trade disequilibria and nearly all had dollar shortages; and progress toward trade liberalization had halted and even retrogressed in some major instances. These difficulties, the report pointed out, could not be attributed to unusual or temporary factors; such temporary factors as Korea and World War II dislocations were no longer of major significance in the economic situation while such elements as defense expenditures and interrupted east-west trade could be considered permanent.

In the period from June 4 through November 19, 1952, the Council of the Organization of American States held ten meetings. The General Secretariat was authorized to use supplementary credit to carry out resolution VIII of the Fourth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs which concerned strengthening internal security. The budgets of the Pan American Institute on Geography and History and the American Institute for the Protection of Childhood were examined by the Council. On two occasions, members were urged to pay their quotas of contributions for maintaining the Pan American Union and OAS specialized agencies. Among other decisions taken by the Council in relation to other inter-American organizations were approval of the reports on the Inter-American Telecommunications Conference, the Inter-American Radio Office, the Pan American Highway Congress, and the eighth assembly of the Inter-American Commission of Women. A report containing provisions on a draft revised constitution of the Pan American Sanitary Organization was approved by the Council following study by the Committee on Inter-American Organizations. It was further decided to establish cooperative relations with the International Road Federation.

The twenty-second annual report of the Bank for International Settlements, covering the period from April 1, 1951, to March 31, 1952, was made public in June 1952. The report noted that in the first half of 1950, immediately prior to the outbreak of fighting in Korea, a real approach had been made throughout the world toward economic balance; the equilibrium had not, however, been too secure. The effects of the double impact of Korea and the rearmaments efforts of the west, with accompanying increases in imports and rise in prices of raw materials, had finally been arrested only in early 1951.