The First Step

The U.S. took the first big step last week toward making the United Nations a working organization. To the governments of 38 nations went invitations to participate in a conference on postwar food problems to be held somewhere on U.S. soil, starting April 27.

In the works are U.S. invitations to at least five other conferences on:

> Monetary policy (to be held in Washington at the end of April), at which the U.S. will trundle out its own Treasury plan to revise the 1936 Tripartite Monetary Agreement. This plan was the U.S. answer to British Economist John Maynard Keynes’s plan for a world bank with a new bookkeeping unit—the bancor (TIME, April 5).

> Refugees (probably in Bermuda).

> Relief and rehabilitation.

> Health and transportation, both still in the outline stage.

The Hope. The U.S. had learned some lessons from World War I. At his press conference, Franklin Roosevelt gave newsmen his impression of the months following the 1918 armistice. It reminded him of a woman who is told at noon to be ready three hours later to leave on a month’s trip. Like her, everybody reached into his closet, threw things into suitcases; as might be expected, they packed a lot of things they did not need.

This time, the President hoped, the luggage and briefcases would be accurately packed. Said he: “If you want to be didactic and put it in terms of figures, I would say that so far, in all of the conferences we have held with the other members of the United Nations—this is not just Britain, it applies to the others also—we are about 95% together.”

The Dangers. Franklin Roosevelt had ignored his own warning by calling the food conference at such short notice. No nation will have time to prepare adequately. The agenda was couched in the foggiest of diplomatic language. And since only experts will be present, no binding agreements can be reached. (A White House plan to make it a hush-hush affair by barring the press was reluctantly withdrawn. )

But the overwhelming significance is that the United Nations, 15 months after their formation, are at last getting together, long before the rumble of battle is over.