What persuades?

...She was equally influential in her native England, in Europe, Africa, and at the UN...

...Predictably, his successor, A.W...

...He went from a factual perception of the dangers posed by an economically unbalanced world to an understanding of the way rich nations benefited by the development of poor nations and, finally, to an almost missionary zeal in promoting an understanding of the needs of Third-World nations-a progression in involvement which must have been most devoutly approved by his friend, Barbara Ward...

...An associate says he was converted to the concept of development as a solution to the relationship of the industrial countries with the poor nations by what he came to see as the failure of diplomacy and the futility of war...

...she so influenced Lyndon Johnson that he declared with typical hyperbole that he read her book on the world's poor every day "like the Bible...

...She uses an example of which she had intimate knowledge-the economic intervention of the United States in a devastated Europe after World War II...

...When Barbara Ward died this year, Robert McNamara, the retiring president of the World Bank, wrote a tribute in which he emphasized her gifts of eloquence and the power of persuasion...

...She was a source for Adlai Stevenson's speeches on foreign aid...

...He became the most humanitarian of World Bank presidents...

...I thought so many would rally when they understood," she said sadly...

...Almost twenty countries (like Thailand and the Ivory Coast), recipients only a few years ago, "have not only graduated from low-income to middle-income economies, but today are vigorous and valuable trading partners with the developed nations...

...Demonstration has its uses: it dramatizes issues, creates community among the protestors, and a measure of excitement for increasingly jaded spectators...

...ABIGAIL MCCARTHY action...

...ABIGAIL MCCARTHY...

...Exhortatory lobbying creates a little guilt and is self-satisfying for the righteous lobbyist-as is the public excoriation of "economic malefactors...

...Many remember Robert McNamara as the apparently hard-headed former businessman and Secretary of Defense during the war in Vietnam, who appeared tirelessly and loyally before congressional committees supporting his president's course of action in terms of numbers-of "body count," for example...

...It's a two-prong thing," he told a financial reporter, ". . .the other one, I think is a more practical, pragmatic prong, and that is the vested-interest prong...

...When I last saw Barbara Ward she was disappointed that her book, The Lopsided World, which she had been commissioned to write by an ecumenical organization, had had so little distribution through church channels and so little impact in getting the support of church people in this country for Third World initiatives...

...It is clear that he knows the mood of the currently ungenerous American public and that he is aware of the unrealistic economic pieties and the buzz words of the Reagan administration...

...An economist and thinker, she excelled in presenting the abstract in such concrete terms that her readers or hearers could see what needed to be done, what steps should be taken...

...In the Marshall plan, they gave away two percent or more of their total produc tion of goods and services for over five years to friends and enemies alike-and at that time they were only half as wealthy as they are today," she writes, "This was the beginning of the long prosperity of the '50s and the '60s, and not least to benefit were the Americans themselves...

...Certainly he was only one of the movers and shakers of this world who had been moved to action, in part, by that remarkable woman who had made the cause of development her own...

...The pope, in his wide-ranging labor encyclical, has summoned us to close the gap between rich and poor on a global scale, to use the world's resources responsibly, to make technology and economics serve all humanity-to mention only the largest topics...

...He is not as convinced as was McNamara that better understanding of the mission of the bank and the plight of poor nations will move America to finance it...

...How did she There were many ways, of course, but appeal to enlightened self-interest was certainly one of them...

...Or, in less apocalyptic terms, if we're interested in electing other than one-issue people, upgrading public education, saving the nation's colleges, getting true equality for women, helping families or farmers-in any number of the worthwhile things that need doing...

...Those who are morally committed must consider how to move others to the necessary action...

...Between the rhetoric and the reality lies an enormous task of persuasion...

...she was often behind the scenes in Rome and eventually a member of the papal commission on Justice and Peace, which might never have come into being without her years of patient spadework...

...It seems to me significant that a decade later, again addressing a church audience, she did not stop with her message that "our Lord makes plain this absolute priority of sharing and selfless giving" or with informing her readers but pointed out that giving can be practical as well...

...In the pamphlet Peace and Justice in the World written for the bishops of England and Wales and published posthumously, (to which I alluded in my last column in the September 25 Commonweal), she points out that sharing with the poor countries of the world can serve the interests of the rich countries...

...she counseled John Kennedy during his presidency...

...How did she do it...

...But are these devices enough to persuade, to move people to action...

...It is a productive investment...

...Clausen also pointed out in his first speech to an annual meeting that money from the IDA is not "a welfare check...

...That is, it is really in the vested interest of the United States . . . to give funds through a professional, proven, non-political instrumentality . . . for economic development in the Third World countries so that we can have more jobs here in the United States, to widen our markets, our wares and services and products...

...thirty-six percent of the exports of the United States goes to Third World countries...

...The church, in the current phrase, has "opted for the poor...

...That's a question we should all be pondering just now if we wish to forestall nuclear and ecological disaster and the spread of poverty, of despair, and upheaval...

...For every dollar that the United States gives to the World Bank, $3 comes back...

...Tom) Clausen, former chairman of the Bank of America, by no means a charitable institution, is less inclined to stress the needs of poor nations as a rationale for making "soft'' loans to them through the World Bank's arm, the International Development Association...