774


FOREIGN RELATIONS, 19 5 0, VOLUME I


to sustain Fund", and we will suffer a public relations setback.7 I
would agree that some of the British press will certainly do this, but
I think that there will be considerable segments of the press that will
headline the fact that the United States and Canada have taken the
position that they did. We know already, for example, that the Times
and the Economist, commenting on the Fund report, have expressed
the opinion that the time has come for the beginning of relaxation.
So I am not too worried about this point.
   [Here follows further and brief comment.]
                                               WINTHROP G. BROWN

  There had been considerable press attention about the Article XII con-
sultations both in the United States and in the United Kingdom, occasioned
to
a degree by the fact that reports of the International Monetary Fund to -the
Contracting Parties had been the subject of unauthorized leaks to the press.;


International Trade Files, Lot 57D284, Box 165, Folder "Balance of Payments"
The Chairman of the United States Delegation to the Fifth Session of
   the Contracting Parties to GATT (Browzn) to the Acting Director
   of the Office of International Trade Policy (Leddy)

rERSONAL AND SECRET                 [ToRQUAY,] November 23, 1950,
   DEAR JOHN: Len Weiss had a talk today with Arthur Burgess of
the United Kingdom Delegation, who expressed concern at the way
the consultations have been going, not so much in what has been
happening here at Torquay, but at the fact that the British feel very
much annoyed at the way they have been "pushed around" by the
[U.S.] Treasury. Arthur says they are ready to consider relaxations,
but they feel that they have been put in a position where the voting
power of the United States in the Fund has been used to force their
hand. They have the feeling, rightly or wrongly, that this was done
without proper consultation with the British, and that this is incom-
patible with the position of Britain as a friendly, sovereign country
and bad for the general relationships between the two countries.
   Stephen Holmes has said much the same thing to me. In speaking
of the treatment received in the Fund, Stephen spoke with evident
strong emotion, something which you realize is unusual for him..
   Some of the questions they have been asked during this consultation
have, I have felt, been irrelevant and merely irritating. George has
been doing the detailed questioning and I have been doing the final
statements. In justice to George, I must say that the excellence and
completeness of the Fund's facts and figures have made it somewhat
difficult to ask pertinent questions without simply repeating what was