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I would like to thank Margaret McElligott and Helen Coskeran for the helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to acknowledge my great debt to Francine McKenzie and the anonymous referee. I am the sole responsible for all errors.
I must say I share the view of those who say it is an impossible enterprise, and I must confess, I embarked on it with a considerable amount of trepidation. It was entirely new ground. There is no precedent for an operation so complex or grandiose on which one could work, and therefore, we were breaking new ground. 1
Introduction
Upon entering the Centre William Rappard, the World Trade Organization (WTO) headquarters in Geneva, you are greeted by the beautiful Delft ceramic panel produced by the Dutch artist Albert Hahn Jr. The work has more than 2,000 tiles which reproduce the preamble to Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles (which became the International Labour Organization constitution) in several languages. It is a statement of the past, as the same building formerly housed the International Labour Organization. For 30 years the panel was hidden from public view as it was considered inappropriate by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Secretariat, the institution that preceded the WTO. 2
One of the building's biggest rooms is located just behind the panel: the Eric Wyndham White Room, in honor of GATT's first Director General.3There is nothing covering the room's name or the painting portraying Wyndham White at the entrance. Notwithstanding that, the founding father of the multilateral trading system is rarely remembered, and his achievements seldom celebrated by historians or even by the WTO itself. This situation is startling. Wyndham White was the face and soul of GATT negotiations from 1947 up until 1968. The international press followed his activities, and around the world politicians and government officials praised his achievements. However, since he stepped down from his post in 1968, he received almost no notice. One of the few occasions in which his role was recalled was in 1990, when the Chairman of the Contracting Parties, Ambassador John M. Weekes (Canada), proposed to name the principal conference room at the GATT headquarters as 'Salle Eric Wyndham White'.