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The Future of
Globalization
Constantine Michalopoulos
Aid, Trade and Development
“This is a very well written book, technically sound, and a great source of
material for anyone who wants to understand the factors that have shaped
much of international economics for the past half century. This new edition
adds useful perspective on the implications of the new challenges facing
developing countries as a result of the pandemic and increased unilateralism
and protectionism in the North. More tellingly, Michalopoulos writes with
passion on developments that he knows very well and cares deeply about.”
—K.Y. Amoako, President of the African Center for Economic
Transformation, Ghana
“In this new edition, Michalopoulos adds valuable new insights on critical
current issues, making his panoramic overview of the global economy even
more incisive.”
—Danny Leipziger, Professor of International Business and International
Affairs, George Washington University, United States
“As its predecessor, this book is coolly realistic and solidly grounded on empir-
ical evidence. But it also offers a vision of the policies required to reverse the
troublesome changes of the last few years, while at the same time recognizing
the imperative of greater inclusiveness of groups and countries left behind by
the earlier globalization waves. Both the analysis and the vision outlined by
Michalopoulos will contribute substantially to the international debate and
actual initiatives on international trade and on development prospects of poor
countries.”
—Salvatore Schiavo-Campo, former Senior Adviser at the Asian Development
Bank, Philippines, author of Running the Government
“Getting aid and trade policy to support sustainable development is not easy.
Michalopoulos’ new book tells the story of past progress and failures over
the last half century. In recent years we have gone backwards. The author
argues that the global community should live up to its commitments to help
end global poverty and that we cannot prevent disastrous climate change and
ecological collapse without a renewed commitment to multilateral coopera-
tion. Developing countries must receive the support promised in Glasgow at
COP26. The book is readable and authoritative. If we are to do better, we
must build on the lessons of the past and this volume will help enormously.”
—Clare Short, former Secretary of State for International Development,
United Kingdom
Constantine Michalopoulos
Aid, Trade
and Development
The Future of Globalization
Second Edition
Constantine Michalopoulos
Lusby, MD, USA
1st edition: © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
2nd edition: © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation,
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
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To Eveline whose unwavering commitment to a just economic order and
democratic institutions is a continuing inspiration
Preface
The idea of writing this book first came to me about a decade ago. At
that time, I had written Migration Chronicles, a semi-autobiographical
volume, and several friends had said: “Nice book, but what did you actu-
ally do in those jobs you had?” So, I thought that at some point I would
write something which focused on the various development policy issues
involving aid, trade, and development with which I grappled in various
positions with the World Bank, USAID, and WTO.
I was lucky that I was involved in a small way in policymaking on the
major issues of the period from the late 1960s to the early twenty-first
century: addressing the impact of the OPEC oil price rise in the early
1970s, the development of a basic human needs aid strategy in the late
1970s, the debt crisis, the “Washington Consensus” and “Adjustment
with a Human Face” of the 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the birth of the WTO in the 1990s; and later in the decade 2000–2010
with continued involvement on these issues as a consultant to European
aid agencies like the UK’s DFID, Sweden’s SIDA, and Germany’s GTZ.
In the fall of 2015 when, after 50 years, I finished my professional
career teaching a course on International Trade and Development at
vii
viii Preface
updated. The middle three chapters dealing with the past decade have
been substantially rewritten to reflect more recent perspectives. The last
part of the volume is completely new: it reviews the pandemic experience
and its impact on sustainable development and makes recommendations
on how to address the challenges of the future, a future which looks
more uncertain than a few years ago: These include actions to deal with
future pandemics, addressing climate change, working to make global-
ization more just and equitable, and promoting longer term sustainable
global development. As the volume was going to print Russia invaded
Ukraine adding another great uncertainty to the future world order. The
last chapter ends with a call for a revival of multilateralism, as both
the pandemic and climate change have reminded everybody that global
problems can only be addressed through global multilateral action.
This volume could not have been completed without a great deal of help
and advice from friends and former colleagues. I am grateful to very
many of them who over the years influenced my thinking about aspects
of aid, trade, and development, but were not involved in the writing of
this volume or its previous edition.
Special thanks are reserved for a group who devoted a lot of effort,
some to provide material, others to correct my mistakes, add perspec-
tives, and actually change my views by reading and commenting on one
or several chapters or the whole of the first edition of this volume whose
contribution continues as this edition contains a good deal of material
from the old one. These include Masood Ahmed, K. Y. Amoako, Michael
Crosswell, John Eriksson, Ruth Jacoby, Hilde Johnson, Danny Leipziger,
Ira Lieberman, James Michel, John Nellis, Donal Donovan, George
Papaconstantinou, Salvatore Schiavo-campo, Alexander Shakow, Clare
Short, David Tarr, George Tavlas, and Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul.
And then there was a somewhat smaller very special group who perse-
vered and continued to help with this second edition. Clare Short
read and commented on the whole volume, while K. Y. Amoako,
xi
xii Acknowledgments
Constantine Michalopoulos
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Growth Constraints, Aid Targets, and Basic Needs 9
3 Export Pessimism and the Neoclassical Revival 35
4 Debt and Adjustment: Muddling Through 55
5 The Collapse of Planning and the Troubled
Transition 97
6 The Birth of the WTO 133
7 The Many Faces of Globalization 173
8 Millennium Aid, Trade, and Development 217
9 Liberalism in Retreat 251
10 Sustainable Development Goals 295
11 The Rise of Populism and Anti-Globalization 313
12 The Plague Years 341
xiii
xiv Contents
Index 419
About the Author
xv
Also by Constantine Michalopoulos
xvii
Acronyms
AB Appellate Body
ACET African Center for Economic Transformation
ACFTA African Continental Free Trade Area
ACP African Caribbean and Pacific
ACWL Advisory Centre on WTO Law
ADB Asian Development Bank
AFT Aid for Trade
AGOA African Growth and Opportunity Act
AHDI Adjusted Human Development Index
AHF Adjustment with a Human Face
AID Agency for International Development
AIIB Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
AITIC Agency for International Trade Information and Cooperation
AMS Aggregate Measures of Support
ASCM Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures
BHN Basic Human Needs
BRICS Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa
BWI Bretton Woods Institutions
CCRT Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust
CEE Central and Eastern Europe
xix
xx Acronyms
xxiii
xxiv List of Tables
The last chapter focuses on the steps the global community has to
take to provide economic assistance to developing countries to meet
the challenges of achieving longer term sustainable development. These
include short-term assistance to offset the pandemic’s economic disrup-
tion, including measures to deal with the mounting debt problems of
HIPC, and strengthening global institutions such as the WHO, to enable
it to anticipate and cope with future pandemics. Additional actions
are needed by developed countries to honor their existing commit-
ments to help developing countries with climate change as well as take
any further steps needed to promote decarbonization and address the
emerging climate crisis. Finally, it is important to refocus the inter-
national community on the continuing developing country needs for
assistance to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality, and achieve the SDGs.
Taking all these actions requires intensive international collaboration
and a revival of multilateralism. The pandemic has reminded everybody
that global multilateral action is needed to deal with global problems
irrespective of the economic systems that prevail in different countries.
International collaboration must take into account the new economic
reality of a large and dynamic China, a territorially aggressive Russia and
the political reality that in the absence of effective systems to support,
those left behind by globalization and technology will continue to be
vulnerable to protectionist, isolationist movements. The experience of
the last fifty years strongly suggests that only a vibrant, multilateral
system provides humanity with the best chance of meeting the chal-
lenges of tomorrow, achieving the SDGs and building a more resilient
and inclusive world.
Reference
Baldwin, R. (2016) The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New
Globalization, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap).
2
Growth Constraints, Aid Targets,
and Basic Needs
Introduction
Government-to-government economic assistance programs on conces-
sional terms that aim to promote the development of the recipient is
a post-World War II phenomenon, although there were occasional offi-
cial loans and other assistance in earlier periods. Most consider that
aid started with the US Marshall Plan in 1947.1 In 1960, the Devel-
opment Assistance Group of the Organization for European Economic
Co-operation (OECD, which included European recipients of Marshall
Plan aid and the US) was set up to exchange information on members’
aid activities in developing countries. In 1961, upon the establishment
of the OECD, the Group became the OECD Development Assistance
Committee (DAC). Its mandate is “to consult on the methods for
making national resources available for assisting countries and areas in
the process of economic development and for expanding and improving
the flow of long term funds and other development assistance to them”
(Fuhrer 1996, p. 10).
During these early years, the US provided the bulk of foreign aid
from the OECD countries, about 55% of $3.8 billion in 1957. But 15
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9
Switzerland AG 2022
C. Michalopoulos, Aid, Trade and Development, Second Edition,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96036-0_2
10 Constantine Michalopoulos
other OECD countries were also providing assistance in the late fifties
with France and the UK being the major other donors primarily to
former colonies and territories. The Netherlands also launched a tech-
nical assistance program early, in 1949. But for a long time, it provided
assistance only through the UN or other multilateral agencies. The Soviet
Union and other socialist countries were also providing economic assis-
tance to developing countries during this period, whose amount was hard
to quantify but was estimated at roughly a tenth of the OECD total
(OECD 1969, p. 294).
Aid comes in different forms and on different terms. The definition
used in this book includes Official Development Assistance, (ODA)
which is defined to include assistance from the donor’s public sector
for developmental purposes, net of repayments of capital with a grant
element of at least 25%.2 It will also include flows from the World
Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) and other Multi-
lateral Development Banks (MDBs) “soft” windows which are extended
on ODA terms. Other official flows (OOF) from these institutions which
are on harder terms (interest rates and maturities) than ODA but softer
than what can be obtained in the private capital markets as well as other
official flows from bilateral donors which do not qualify as ODA are
measured separately and exclude credits from the IMF.
Developed country aid objectives have always been very complex.
Political/security objectives and pursuit of domestic economic and
commercial interests, sometimes very narrowly defined often combine
and dominate the promotion of development or global humanitarian
objectives. In earlier periods, the objective of US agricultural commodity
assistance under the so-called Public Law 480 was as much disposing
of US agricultural surplus commodities as helping feed poor people in
the developing world. New donors’ assistance, especially from China is
often closely linked to projects aimed at increasing China’s access to raw
materials. And even today about 20% of bilateral aid programs are tied
to procurement in the donor reducing substantially their value to the
recipient.
Multilateral assistance which is usually untied by source tends to
be less dominated by narrow commercial considerations of the major
donors. Some donors nevertheless include procurement staff among their
2 Growth Constraints, Aid Targets, and Basic Needs 11
Development Constraints
Early thinking about economic development stressed the role of accu-
mulation of physical and human capital. Thus, the role of aid focused
on its potential in helping recipients address constraints on capital accu-
mulation that inhibited their development. In terms of physical capital,
aid could help countries break the vicious circle of poverty: their low
real incomes were thought to result in a low capacity to save; “their
low real income is a reflection of low productivity, which in turn is
due largely to the lack of capital. The lack of capital is a result of the
small capacity to save, and so the circle is complete” (Nurkse 1967, p. 5).
There was also an awareness that weaknesses in institutions and infras-
tructure create limits in the capacity of the recipient to absorb capital
efficiently (Nurkse 1967, p. 95). Thus, the absorptive capacity constraint
and its impact on the productivity of investment and, hence its relation
to the savings constraint, was identified as an important issue (Little and
Clifford 1966).
On the human capital side, aid could help developing counties
strengthen educational systems as well as set up institutions that would
develop and adopt appropriate technologies that would enhance produc-
tivity, especially in sectors such as health and agriculture. Very little
attention was initially paid to recipients’ policies, how the aid will be used
or who will benefit from it. Most support was devoted to financing indi-
vidual projects or the provision of bilateral technical assistance through
experts usually provided by the donor.
In the early sixties, continued pessimism about developing country
export prospects (see below Chapter 3) and recognition of the impor-
tance of imports needed to finance additional domestic capital forma-
tion, led to the development of the so-called two-gap model. In the
basic Harrod–Domar model (Hicks 1965), growth depends on the rate
of savings and a measure of capital productivity. Hollis Chenery his
colleagues in the US Agency for International Development (USAID)
and others (Chenery and Strout 1966; Adelman and Chenery 1966;
McKinnon 1964) showed that under assumptions of fixed production
coefficients, a fixed supply of foreign exchange inadequate to meet a
technologically given volume of capital and intermediate goods imports
2 Growth Constraints, Aid Targets, and Basic Needs 13
Aid Targets
At the first Ministerial meeting of the Group of 77 developing countries
(G-77) in Algiers in 1967 they called for “a separate minimum target…
for the official component of aid flows, net of amortization and interest
payments” (OECD 2002). At the second ministerial UNCTAD meeting
in 1968 its Secretary General, Raul Prebisch, proposed that “a minimum
figure of 0.75% of GNP of developed countries could be established
for net official aid” (OECD 2002). This was based on work by Jan
Tinbergen who, using a foreign exchange constraint model, came up
with estimates of foreign aid needed to achieve the desired GNP target
of 6% per annum for developing countries until 1975 (OECD 2002).5
The target grew out of an earlier suggestion first made by the World
Council of Churches in 1958 to transfer 1% of donor country incomes
2 Growth Constraints, Aid Targets, and Basic Needs 15
Partners in Development
Recommendations
1. Create a framework for free and equitable international trade
2. Promote mutually beneficial flows of foreign private investment
3. Establish a better partnership, a clearer purpose, and a greater
coherence in development aid
4. Increase the volume of aid
5. Meet the problem of mounting debts
6. Make aid administration more effective
7. Redirect technical assistance
8. Slow the growth of population
9. Revitalize aid to education and Research
10. Strengthen the multilateral aid system
Partners in Development (1969, pp. 14–22)
of 0.7% of its GNP at market prices by the middle of the decade.” Prac-
tically all developed countries, with the exception of the US have, over
time, accepted this target, although very few have consistently achieved
it (See Table 2.1).
In the US, the Nixon administration also commissioned a task force
on international development whose report to the President on March 4,
1970 echoes many of the same themes as the Pearson Commission (Task
Force 1970). For example, it recommends: (a) a more sensible approach
of coping with debt than rescheduling only when a country is in immi-
nent default; (b) the establishment of a high-level council within the US
government to promote greater coherence of aid programs; (c) greater
reliance on multilateral aid; and (d) the coordinated untying of bilateral
aid from donor country procurement. The report pays the same tribute
to the importance of private investment flows as the Pearson Commis-
sion and recommends the establishment of a new US government agency
(Overseas Private Investment Corporation—OPIC) to promote such
flows.
With the exception of the establishment of OPIC and a relative
increase of the role of multilateral institutions, none of its other institu-
tional recommendations was followed at the time. Eight years later, the
Carter administration killed an effort to untie procurement of bilateral
aid on a coordinated basis (see Chapter 3) but implemented the recom-
mendation to establish a high-level council to co-ordinate aid which,
however, was undone by Reagan in 1980. The task force report is also
very interesting because unlike the Pearson Report it contains a very
explicit statement on an issue that would be central to aid programs in
the next decade. It states: “Development is more than economic growth.
Popular participation and the dispersion of the benefits of development
among all groups of society are essential to the building of dynamic and
healthy nations. US development policies should contribute to this end
(Task Force 1970, p. 4).” At about the same time the role of “social
factors” as explanatory variables of economic growth started to receive
recognition (Schiavo-campo and Singer 1970, p. 79).
In retrospect, these international discussions highlight the many links
between North and South, the developed country commitment to
Table 2.1 ODA Performance of DAC Countries 1970–2020 (in $ milliona and %GNI)
DAC $ million % of GNI
Countries
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2015 2020 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2015 2020c
Original
DAC
Australia 1565.5 1724.9 1725.0 2021.9 3366.9 3566.3 2563 0.62 0.48 0.34 0.27 0.32 0.29 019
Austria 99.1 445.9 259.3 742.2 1196.1 1418.3 1268 0.07 0.23 0.11 0.23 0.32 0.35 029
Belgium 830.9 1220.6 1375.1 1372.5 2928.1 2060.4 2299 0.46 0.50 0.46 0.36 0.64 0.42 0.47
Canada 1783.8 2722.1 3756.2 2812.1 4657.5 4413.3 5031 0.41 0.43 0.44 0.26 0.34 0.28 0.31
Denmark 476.5 1151.3 1774.0 2765.5 2623.8 2659.1 2649 0.38 0.74 0.94 1.06 0.91 0.85 0.73
Finland 51.2 249.3 984.1 609.3 1316.3 1356.9 1275 0.06 0.22 0.65 0.31 0.55 0.55 0.47
France 4676.1 5579.5 9772.1 6422.5 11,799.7 9419.6 14,139 0.52 0.44 0.60 0.31 0.50 0.37 0.53
Germany 4163.4 7515.3 8995.0 7899.9 12,710.9 19,319.3 28,405 0.32 0.44 0.42 0.27 0.39 0.52 0.73
Italy 1157.3 1831.6 4690.5 2317.2 2790.2 4187.5 4186 0.15 0.15 0.31 0.13 0.15 0.22 0.22
Japan 3399.6 7422.0 11,062.5 12,095.1 9042.2 10,265.6 16,266 0.23 0.32 0.31 0.28 0.20 0.20 0.31
Netherlands 1562.7 3422.0 4020.2 5248.1 5997.6 6199.8 5359 0.62 0.97 0.92 0.84 0.82 0.75 0.59
New 128.1 235.3 184.8 252.0 369.1 454.1 531 0.23 0.33 0.23 0.25 0.26 0.27 0.27
Zealand
Norway 293.7 1229.5 2114.6 2226.1 3599.0 4263.8 4198 0.33 0.87 1.17 0.76 1.05 1.05 1.11
Sweden 587.1 1567.3 2204.0 2427.2 4028.7 6888.9 6348 0.35 0.78 0.91 0.80 0.97 1.41 1.14
Switzerland 383.6 752.4 1282.1 1631.7 2361.0 3406.7 3560 0.14 0.24 0.30 0.32 0.39 0.51 0.48
United 3467.6 3662.5 3532.0 5579.3 12,680.2 16,846.0 18,560 0.39 0.35 0.27 0.32 0.57 0.71 0.70
Kingdom
United 16,329.0 18,956.5 20,089.8 14,313.8 34,641.0 33,248.3 35,475 0.32 0.27 0.21 0.10 0.20 0.17 0.17
States
Later DAC
(continued)
2 Growth Constraints, Aid Targets, and Basic Needs
17
Table 2.1 (continued)
18
Aid Effectiveness
What is most remarkable about the late 1960s was the very strong devel-
oping country and international focus on the level of aid as a determinant
of developing country growth. There was little discussion of the use aid
22 Constantine Michalopoulos
was being put to, who would benefit from it, or its relationship to other
donor or recipient policies.
There were always opponents of aid from both the left and the right.
P.T. Bauer (1972) was an early and persistent opponent from the right.
His early criticism was that aid tended to strengthen the role of the
public sector and to support public sector enterprises which were inef-
ficient. Later, he would argue that “External donations have not been
necessary to achieve development for any country anywhere” (Bauer and
Yamey 1981). Others argued that aid tended to tilt recipients’ invest-
ment patterns toward sectors with longer term or lower payoffs, thus
reducing the productivity of investment (Griffin and Enos 1970). On the
left, Teresa Hayter argued that “aid can be explained only in terms of an
attempt to preserve the capitalist system in the Third World…But insofar
as it is effective its contribution to the well- being of peoples of the Third
World is negative, since it is not in their interest that exploitation should
continue” (Hayter 1971, p. 9).
Cross-country statistical analyses to explore various aspects of the
aid-growth relationship yielded mixed results. Griffin and Enos (1970,
p. 318) using analysis from fifteen countries in Latin America in 1957–
1964 concluded that the greater the capital inflows the lower the rate
of growth of the receiving country. Similar conclusions were reached
by Weisskopf (1972) using a two-gap model for seventeen countries.
Papanek (1973a, b) on the other hand, while finding a negative relation-
ship between aid and domestic savings, also found a strong link between
foreign capital inflows and GNP growth.
There are both conceptual and statistical problems with many of these
studies (Cassen and Associates 1986; Krueger et al. 1989). For example,
it is not appropriate to use the current account deficit as a proxy for
foreign aid as Weisskopf did. The savings-capital inflow relationship in
a cross-country sample may reflect simply donor allocation decisions
that favor lower income countries with lower savings rates. Absorptive
capacity is difficult to define. Similarly, the two-gap model is difficult to
test in practice, as ex post there is equality in the observed savings and
foreign exchange gaps. Country studies are needed in order to explain
the role of aid in GNP growth. In some cases, such studies have shown
foreign aid to have made an important contribution as in the case of
2 Growth Constraints, Aid Targets, and Basic Needs 23
Greece as well as Korea and Taiwan. Asian countries appear to have made
better use of aid than Latin America (Cassen and Associates 1986).
Aid is typically a small portion of domestic capital formation, savings
and other macroeconomic variables in many countries. Domestic policies
and institutions and, in some cases, exogenous factors such as develop-
ments in the international economy, are likely to be far more important
determinants of long-term sustainable growth. Thus, it is not surprising
that cross-country analyses produce inconclusive results. But, as expe-
rience with aid giving increased, another more serious criticism of aid
started to gain acceptance in the early 1970s. The problem was not, some
argued, that aid was not contributing to growth. Rather that whatever
growth occurred did not “trickle down.” The problem with aid was not
so much its lack of impact on growth but that such growth did little
to alleviate poverty. This criticism had a lasting effect on aid programs
of the major donors in the 1970s and formed the basis for assessing aid
effectiveness for the next several decades.
Who Benefits
The lead in addressing the question of the impact of aid on poverty
was taken by the World Bank and USAID in 1973. Before that, in
1969—perhaps following the Pearson Commission report- McNamara at
the World Bank, started to have concerns that rapid population growth
would undermine development prospects. “Population control was a
likely first approach to poverty alleviation” (Kapur et al. 1997, volume
1, p. 235). Over the next few years, McNamara focused increasingly
on problems of absolute poverty and income distribution in developing
countries and in finding ways that the World Bank could help address
them. In 1973, he announced a drastic expansion of the Bank’s program
of lending to small farmers as the main World Bank instrument of
attacking poverty. From $2.2 billion or 19% of total lending in FY
1970–1973 it grew to $13.2 billion or 31% of total lending in FY 1978–
1981 (Focus on Poverty 1983, p. 10). The Bank also started to increase
the poverty focus of urban projects, provided about 5% of its lending
24 Constantine Michalopoulos
It was toward Christmas that Lettice, coming into her aunt’s room
one day, found the good lady pondering over two letters which she
had been reading. “Your father and your uncle are on their way
home,” she announced abruptly.
“Oh, how very glad I am!” cried the girl. “There are some good things
left for us, after all, Aunt Martha; though sometimes, when I think of
this war and all it has cost me, I feel as if it had stripped me of
everything.”
“This war, indeed; yes, I don’t half blame my brother for calling it an
unrighteous proceeding.” She tapped the letter she had just been
reading; then she burst out again: “But we would have been cowards
not to have fought for our rights. New Englander as I am, I must
confess that the Federalists are going too far. What does this
convention at Hartford mean but an attempt to dissever the Union?
For all that Edward excuses it on the ground of an effort to thwart an
incompetent government, it means nothing more nor less than an
ugly word—secession.”
“Oh, Aunt Martha, really?”
“That’s what it looks like. However, let us hope it will not come about.
Here, you may read the letter; there is one enclosed from Rhoda
which will give you her news, such as it is.”
Lettice read the two letters and returned them without a word; then
she went to the window and looked out. “I am very fond of Rhoda,”
she remarked after a little while. “Her letter did not show that she
was in very good spirits, Aunt Martha.”
“Rhoda is not one to show great enthusiasm,” Aunt Martha replied.