Baden-Baden Bankers

Dramatically last week the Governor of the Bank of Belgium, courageous old Louis Franck, announced that he for one was through with the International Bankers Conference at Baden-Baden (TIME, Sept. 23, et seq.). With dignity and ire M. Franck marched from the conference room, accompanied by Second Belgian Delegate Paul Van Zeeland. Both bristling Belgians cut dead, as they departed, the Governor of the German Reichsbank, famed Dr. Hjalmar Schacht.

For almost two months the conference has been working beaverishly to draft the charter and statutes of the Bank for International Settlements. The B. I. S. will be the clearing house for German reparations payments under the Young Plan. Eventually it will issue some $1.500.000,000 of reparations bonds, most of which U. S. citizens will buy. Last week, with charter and statutes well nigh completed, it had become impossible to put off any longer a highly controversial question which had been feared and avoided from the first, namely: In what city should the B. I. S. be located? As everyone remembers, Britain's choleric Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden fought at The Hague Conference for London, but no decision was reached then.

When the showdown came last week, four of the seven nations* which will be original stockholders in the B. I. S. were found to favor locating it in Brussels. The other three were for London. Decision could not be taken without unanimous consent, but Belgium's hopes were high. Then blunt Dr. Schacht rose and earned the cut direct which he later received. "Germany will never agree to Brussels," he barked, "or to any other Belgian city as the location of the bank!" Though the Belgians immediately withdrew and went straight to Brussels whence they vowed they would not return, optimism continued the mood of the squarejawed, driving U. S. chairman of the conference at Baden-Baden, Jackson Eli Reynolds,/- president of First National Bank of New York. Within a few hours he had jammed through by unanimous vote of the delegates who remained a decision that the B. I. S. should be located in strictly neutral Switzerland, at Basle, probably the most central and easily accessible railway junction in Europe. It was generally believed that the Belgian Government will ratify this and the other decisions of the bankers conference when they are laid before statesmen of the great powers at the second Hague conference, tentatively expected to convene some time this month.

*U. S., Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Japan .

/-Who graduated from Stanford in the class behind Herbert Hoover.