INTRODUCTION

One indication of American thinking was the publication in 1943 of a compendium of four books by prominent American politicians under the collective title Prefaces to Peace. While it had no official status, it represented an important strand within official thinking about the post-war world. Wendell Wilkie, Republican presidential nominee in the 1940 election, ex-President Herbert Hoover, incumbent Vice-President Henry Wallace, and Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles collectively affirmed the necessity of planning for peace in the midst of war. Despite differences of emphasis, two imperatives were shared by all: the determination not to repeat the error of 1919-20, when the United States had repudiated membership of the League of Nations, and a conviction that economic considerations (effectively ignored in the Versailles settlement) were as important as politics in framing the new world order. Broadly, this meant, firstly, that the United States must participate in a new international political organization and, secondly, in the words of Henry Wallace, that the United States must collaborate ‘with the rest of the world to put productive resources fully to work’ (Wallace 1943: 415). Political and economic internationalism were subsequently embodied in the United Nations organization and the Bretton Woods machinery, which included the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (commonly known as the World Bank).