One of the more heartening developments in the field of development economics has been the modest success of the United States investment guarantee program. It did not therefore come entirely as a surprise when Mr. Eugene R. Black, then President of the World Bank, told his Board of Governors at their Vienna meeting in September, 1961, that, following a suggestion by the Development Assistance Committee of the O.E.C.D., the Bank was “studying the possibility of devising a multilateral scheme for the insurance of private foreign investments against various non-commercial risks.”