On a Tuesday morning in the early spring of 1947, Hayek convened a group of thirtynine colleagues in a hotel near Vevey, Switzerland, at the base of Mont Pèlerin. … In an era when transatlantic fl ights remained too expensive for many to afford, they had crossed the Atlantic in ocean liners and had discovered upon their arrival a Eu rope still ravaged by the war. The winter of 1947 had brought famine, freezing weather, impassable roads, shortages of coal, and growing concerns about spiritual malaise and economic stagnation. In the midst of this devastation, Switzerland’s war time neutrality had turned it into an oasis of relative prosperity. The resort where they would spend the next ten days provided a respite from a surrounding continent that was on the verge of painful and stillindeterminate reconstruction.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 262