The author occupied a special place among international officials. In the first place, he was, so to speak, the doyen of the corps, having served without interruption since 1927 in the Secretariats of the League of Nations and the United Nations, and recently with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). In the second place, during almost his entire career he was concerned with building up the economic and social side of international work. He was, for example, Secretary of the Bruce Committee set up by the League in 1939, which prepared the ground for the United Nations Economic and Social Council; he was Dr Gunnar Myrdal's deputy during the earliest days of the Economic Commission for Europe; he was one of the top members of the staff of the San Francisco Conference and the Preparatory Commission of the United Nations that met in London in 1945; he was deputy-head of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs for 12 years, and, for more than 20, the personal representative of my predecessors Trygve Lie, Dag Hammarskjöld and U Thant to the Specialized Agencies; he was Rapporteur of the Administrative Committee on Coordination and Chairman of its Preparatory Committee; he held the newly created post of Assistant Secretary-General for Inter-Agency Affairs from 1967 until his retirement.

Mr Martin Hill wrote with the personal knowledge and authority which such experience affords.