THE CARIBBEAN: Postwar Pattern

The first West Indian Conference of the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission ended last week at Bridgetown, Barbados.* Visiting newsmen feasted on flying fish, yams and rum, were bored. But the delegates representing U.S. and British possessions in the West Indies were enthusiastic about this bold, cooperative attempt to solve the problems of a painfully depressed region.

The West Indian islands, largely isolated from one another, had exchanged few products, little information. In effect, they had been agricultural sweatshops, dependent on distant and uncertain markets. When German U-boats broke into the Caribbean and destroyed or scared away most of its shipping, a kind of regional unity was forced on the islands. The U.S. and Great Britain formed the Caribbean Commission to find ways to keep the islands alive while they were cut off from the outside world. The Commission did the job principally by encouraging local food production, inter-island trade, and other forms of regional cooperation.

At the Bridgetown Conference men met, talked and planned who had never seen one another before, though most of them lived in the same small region. Spark plug of the Conference, and chief U.S. delegate, was public-spirited Charles Taussig, a molasses importer and economist who has labored hard & well with the Commission. British and U.S. indifference, local antipathies must be overcome before any plans can be translated into action. But the planners were excited and hopeful. They were sketching a pattern for postwar cooperation among colonial powers.

*Only foreign territory ever visited by George Washington.