IN the course of 1964 there developed a new and plainly perceptible plateau in foreign aid. The upward trend of recent years in help for the economic development of the poorer countries came to an end and began to flatten out. In most of the richer, industrialised countries, aid programmes came up against political resistance and experienced a mild set-back. This aid plateau was less immediately apparent in Britain than elsewhere. The sincere and earnest concern among the rank and file of the Labour Party for the problem of world poverty led the new Labour Government to take steps that seemed to point towards increased, and not diminished, emphasis on the foreign aid programme. A new Ministry of Overseas Development was set up, and Mrs. Barbara Castle -an old Bevanite and a favourite of long standing in party executive elections-was chosen to head it, with Cabinet rank. British contributions to the United Nations Special Fund and Technical Assistance funds, it was announced, would be increased. Yet the White Paper,' produced in August 1965, carefully avoided any commitment about the total volume of future British aid. The costs of its new measures were all minor, and all in sterling. Significantly, British aid which had risen 100 per cent. in the last four years of the fifties, rose only 25 per cent. in the first four years of the sixties. Already there has been a decrease since 1963 in British loans to developing countries outside the Commonwealth. But in the figure for total British aid this is disguised by a sudden jump in loans to independent Commonwealth countries-a jump partly balanced by a corresponding fall in bilateral aid to the (shrinking) dependent territories. The rather uneven pattern of British aid suggests that the deciding factor in the past has been the need to award golden handshakes to departing colonies, and that, in the future, the overriding concern to protect the balance of payments will tighten the tap still more. Meanwhile, President Johnson's foreign aid programme for 1965, it will be recalled, was the lowest requested of Congress since 1948-less than half the size of the 1951, 1952 or 1953 programmes. France, too, has put a ceiling on aid to her client-states in Africa, and on the