Editorial Note
On October 2 President Truman approved the Department’s recommendations for the composition of the United States Delegation to the First Meeting of the United Nations Preparatory Committee for the International Conference on Trade and Employment, which was to convene in London on October 15. Mr. Clair Wilcox, Director of the Office of International Trade Policy, was appointed Chairman of the Delegation, and Mr. Harry C. Hawkins, Minister-Counselor of Embassy for Economic Affairs at London, was appointed Vice-Chairman. Other members of the 13–man delegation were drawn from the Departments of State, Labor, Commerce, and Agriculture, the Treasury Department, and the United States Tariff Commission. For the official Delegation list, see Department of State Bulletin, October 13, 1946, page 664.
The Conference extended from October 15 to November 26. There is a public documentation of the Conference published by the Economic and Social Council in the United Nations document series E/PC/T. This includes verbatim reports of plenary and committee meetings. For the official report of the Conference, see U.N. Doc. E/PC/T/33. A set of these records is found in Department of State Lot File 57D284, Box 90. For statements made at the opening and final plenary sessions of the conference by the Chairman of the United States Delegation (Wilcox), see Department of State [Page 1352] Bulletin, October 27, 1946, page 757, and December 8, 1946, page 1056. For a comparison of the articles of the draft charter prepared by the conference with the articles originally presented by the United States Delegation, see Department of State Publication 2728, Commercial Policy Series 98, Preliminary Draft, Charter for the International Trade Organization of the United Nations (Washington, 1946).
There is an extensive unpublished documentary collection in the Department of State’s unindexed office lot files, Lot 57–D284, relating to the subject of the proposed International Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and consisting of 124 boxes. This collection includes the official documentation of the United States Delegation to the London meeting of the Preparatory Committee, in five boxes containing background and preparatory material, the working papers of the Conference, and the working papers of the United States Delegation (including a complete file of incoming and outgoing telegrams). An inventory of the entire lot is found in the Research Section of the Department of State’s central files.