WESTERN EUROPE: Improvement Noted

Like penguins emerging from the icy waters of postwar dollar shortages, the black-coated, grey-trousered economists of 20 Western nations gathered in Paris last week for the fall conference of OEEC —the Organization for European Economic Cooperation. There was confidence in the air, and with much good reason. For the first time since the war, said the U.S.'s Harold Stassen, "we meet under no great pressures of economic crisis."

In the first six months of 1953, Western Europe's industrial production had reached an alltime high: 7% above 1952, a whopping 40% above 1938. Europe's gold and dollar reserves stand at better...

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