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In a way, it has — so far. Each IMF member country contributes a quota of gold and its own currency, to be loaned briety to countries with temporary bal ance'of payments deficits. In all, the IMF has accumulated nearly $21 billion, enabling it to lend a lifetime total of $14,2 billion to 64 nations. Now, however, a shortage of funds to finance expanding world trade will make itself felt as soon as the U.S. reduces its own massive dollar and gold drain. A second departure from prewar monetary orthodoxy adopted at Bretton Woods has also proved to be extraordinarily helpful. This is the provision for IMF-approved devaluations whenever a nation's money slips fundamentally out of line with other currencies. In place of the self-defeating rounds of the '20s and '30s, the orderly devaluations under the IMF have involved only minimal repercussions.
The IMF sprang awake at the hands of Sweden's late Per Jacobsson, Schweitzer's flamboyant predecessor as managing director. He developed the concept of stand-by drawings, extra financial aid for underdeveloped countries, came to Britain's rescue after the 1956 Suez crisis with a giant loan. He even persuaded imperious Charles de Gaulle to stiffen the faltering franc. "Mon general," said Jacobsson, "I do not think there will ever be esteem for a country that has a bad currency."
When Jacobsson died at 69, nine months before his planned 1964 retirement, almost everybody seemed to want Schweitzer as his successor in the $40,-000-a-year (tax free) job—except Schweitzer himself. A French senior civil servant, Schweitzer was reluctant to leave his quiet sinecure as No. 3 man in the Bank of France (the position included a 14-room apartment with a full staff). He relented upon learning that he had been Jacobsson's personal choice.
A nephew of both Conductor CnarU Munch and the late philosopher Albert Schweitzer, second cousin to Jean-Paul Sartre, Schweitzer was born in Alsace-Lorraine. He belongs to the French Protestant elite that has played a role in French finance and civil service out of all proportion to its numbers. After studying at the Ecole Libre des Sci ences Politiques, he joined the French Treasury in 1936, went underground as a Resistance fighter after France's fall in 1940, was captured, tortured and im prisoned at Buchenwald in the war's final months. He became an alternate member of the IMF's executive board in 1947, next year helped De Gaulle plan the devaluation and stabilization of the franc. As Per Jacobsson had fore told, that laid the foundation for a French economic comeback.
Fighting the Frivolous. Despite Schweitzer's roots in the French Establishment, there is little love lost between him and the ruler of France. De Gaulle takes it hard that a Frenchman can tell him no, as Schweitzer has some times done with French monetary proposals that he considered frivolous or downright destructive. Impartially, Schweitzer has also shot down a couple of U.S. plans — most recently an Administration proposal for an import surtax to help the balance of payments. Schweitzer bluntly pointed out that the tax would violate IMF's articles, to which the U.S. is a signatory.