World bank

Perhaps the most successful of the great international bodies created after the second world war has been the World Bank, which
has its sharp critics indeed, but is generally admired for its attitude of hard-headed benevolence. With its vast resources, its
empirical methods, its sometimes patronising self-confidence and its immense range of activities, the Bank has established itself as the principal fermenter of the continuing industrial revolution-the chief single agency by which the backward nations of the earth are trying to hoist themselves into equality. Jarnes Morris approaches this tremendous but intractable subject as an interested
and always sceptical layman. One outspoken member of the Bank's staff, he tells us, defied him to write an interesting book about the institution; and in fact this narrative is concerned as much with the World as with the Bank. We are astringently introduced to the thing itself, its polyglot staff, its jargon, its sense of magnificent scale; we examine five situations, in five very different corners of the earth, in which the Bank's money is playing a role; we examine this institution against the sombre and often squalid background of the cold war; and we look, hopefully but not fulsomely, briefly into its future. The World Bank was commissioned from Mr Morris by Mr Eugene Black, the World Bank's remarkable President from 1949 to 1963, but it is in no sense an advertisement or an apologia. It is an impressionistic portrait by a very professional writer of a highly professional organization, and not the least of its interests if the curious conjunction between the two of them.