"Courage and Patience"

WORLD CONFERENCE

"Courage and Patience"

Efficient League of Nations secretaries handed out the last armfuls of memoranda (making eight tons in all) at the World Monetary & Economic Conference in London last week. The statesmen of 66 nations, though they had accomplished nothing, seemed as cheerful as urchins about to be let out of school. With thermometers at 91DEG during the final Conference session, many delegates preferred to sip long drinks at the bar downstairs, leaving their places empty. Those who sat and sweltered whispered jokes among themselves as leading Conference delegates read its swan songs. Depending on the swan, the song was either acrid, gloomy, polite or optimistic. Swans:

Ivan Maisky, short and stocky Ambassador in London of the Soviet Union, made the speech taunting the Capitalist World which his chief, Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Maximovich Litvinov, was too smart to let any Russian make until he personally had negotiated an imposing series of non-aggression pacts in the lobbies of the Conference (TIME, July 17). Last week Comrade Litvinov was sipping the waters of a famed spa, when Comrade Maisky rose to shout: "The results of this Conference are something less than zero! . . . The only lesson we have learned is that a profound organic disease is eating away at the very vitals of world capitalism. ... He who does not realize this, or who attempts to deny it, lives in a fool's paradise. ... In six weeks the Conference has become so hopelessly senile that its organizers are obliged to send their delegates home without having made decisions and without fixing a date for a new session."

Georges Bonnet, dapper French Finance Minister, felicitated everyone on their "loyal efforts," contented himself with remarking that eventually nations off gold would thank France and the other gold standard countries for their efforts to maintain a fixed standard by which fluctuating monies can be measured.

Guido Jung, the white-mustached Italian Finance Minister who visited the White House before he went to the Conference, attacked President Roosevelt's ideas of "managed currency" and a "commodity dollar" last week with a fierceness which suggested that he was speaking on direct orders from Il Duce.

"A managed currency is inconceivable as affording an international monetary standard," cried Signer Jung. "As for monetary systems based on price indices and other elastic measures this is our opinion: no unit of measurement for the productive efforts of nations and for the coordination of the various productive activities within each nation can be based on such quicksands! . . .

"Again and again at this Conference delegates of countries which have experienced inflation of currency and devaluation have risen one after another to declare that such an "experience had been so great a misfortune it was inconceivable their respective governments could again deliberately impose it on their people.

"Fortunately." concluded Signer Jung, "there now seems to be a trend toward world recovery through the action of natural forces."

Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, ramrod-backed, high-collared Governor of the Reichsbank, rose for Germany (which went through the world's worst inflation) to snap, with obvious reference to the U. S., "Some countries have deliberately abandoned stable currency, trying to influence economic conditions by monetary experiments. However deeply we regret this, we cannot deny a sovereign state the right to do what it likes."

Neville Chamberlain, the stooped, hawk-nosed and usually dour Chancellor of the British Exchequer, eased tension by declaring with a smile, "Let us not blame anybody. Let us say that circumstances beyond our control wrecked things." Mr. Chamberlain then warned that Great Britain, until last year a so-called "free trade" country, is still in the stage of "constructing tariff walls," ready to take swift reprisal against states which raise theirs higher against British goods.

President Roosevelt, 3,665 mi. from London, spoke to the Conference through U. S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull who read an optimistic White House cablegram of thanks to James Ramsay MacDonald as President of the Conference.

"I want you to know." read Mr. Hull for Mr. Roosevelt, while Mr. MacDonald beamed, "of my sincere admiration and respect for your courage and your patience. . . . Results are not always measured in terms of formal agreements. . . . We in the United States understand the problems of other nations better today than before the Conference met. . . . We trust that other nations will, in the same spirit of goodwill, view our American policies which are aimed to overcome an unprecedented economic situation at home. . . . "That is why I do not regard the Economic Conference as a failure. . . . You can count on our continued efforts toward world rehabilitation because we are con vinced that a continuation of the work of the World Economic Conference will result in practical good in many fields of joint endeavor."

This cablegram Chief U. S. Delegate Hull backed with a final plea to the Conference for lower tariffs-despite reports in London papers that the U. S. Administration would shortly raise several schedules. As chairman of the Conference Monetary Commission-which deadlocked on stabilization and wrecked the Conference (TIME, June 26 et seq.)- Vice-Chief U. S. Delegate James M. Cox praised the Conference's 500 experts, remarking that "100 of them have been working together at various conferences for ten years." In his final speech Mr. Cox, unable to praise his Monetary Commission, praised the Bank for Interna tional Settlements at Basle, Switzerland as a world force for sound banking which, he said, had helped the Conference. "We can easily foresee," he cried without explaining what he meant, "an entirely new order created by the Bank of International Settlements. ... Of course it can have no arbitrary powers. ... Its services are simply available if desired."* As chairman of the other great Conference working body, the Economic Commission, dry Premier Hendrikus Colijn of the Netherlands tersely remarked, "We have no need to congratulate ourselves."

James Ramsay MacDonald, though as President he tried to summon up all optimism, actually closed the Conference on the same sour note he was obliged to strike in his opening speech: international debts (TIME, June 19).

"During the War and after it a great many nations have been meeting their obligations by borrowing," said President MacDonald. "Unless creditor countries are prepared to accept goods and services in payment of debts, they cannot be paid./- Efforts made to disregard this elementary principle have produced the fall in prices which is ruinous to debtors and creditors alike."

Though admitting that "no definite date can be set for resumption of the Conference," President MacDonald adjourned it with these brave words. "I bid you adieu in the firm conviction that, before many months have passed, I shall have the pleasure of welcoming you again."

Up stood Mr. Cox to move a vote of thanks to King George V (not present) who opened the Conference and to President MacDonald. Nimble M. Bonnet seconded the motion. It passed by a "rising vote" as all the delegates rose to leave at 4:40 p. m. By 6:30 p. m. Secretary Hull and the U. S. Delegation staff were at Waterloo Station aboard a train which took them to Southampton where they sailed on the S. S. President Harding.

Rumors of a rift between Free-Trader Hull and President Roosevelt because of the latter's nationalistic policies were industriously spiked by White House secretaries. "The Chief," they said, cabled last week to Mr. and Mrs. Hull a "cordial invitation" to visit him at Hyde Park (see p. 11).

Aboard the President Harding, Secretary Hull said he will present oral and written reports to President Roosevelt, urging efforts to reduce trade barriers first by concluding bilateral pacts with other nations and then by enlarging these into plurilateral pacts. Mr. Hull hinted that Latin American, Scandinavian and Oriental delegates had responded favorably to pact overtures in London. As to Continental Europe he was mum.

Clearly such pacts can lead either to plurilateral reduction of trade barriers, as Mr. Hull hopes, or to antagonistic groupings of nations into trade blocs. In Mexico City last week thousands of workers gathered to cheer General Plutarco Elias Calles. Mexico's political boss, when he returned from a vacation in Lower California to warn: "One thing is clear! After the fiasco of the London Conference-one of humanity's greatest failures-the nations are forming blocs for an economic war which must be more disastrous than armed conflict."

Hailing President Roosevelt, at the mention of whose name the Mexican crowd roared cheers, General Calles pledged Mexico to economic co-operation with the other countries of North, Central and South America. "America is great as a center of civilization!" he cried. "She has inexhaustible natural resources, seas full of wealth, raw materials capable of satisfying necessities of modern life and minerals and metals in greater quantities still. The Americas have territorial re serves for taking care of our increasing population for many centuries to come. If there must be economic war, let nations beyond the seas take heed. The American nations will be ready."

Costs. As host to the World Monetary & Economic Conference, the League of Nations, after elaborate accounting, will bill its member states. Last week League accountants agreed that "this was certainly the most expensive conference ever held." The British Government has already paid $100,000 to compensate the League "for the additional cost of holding the Conference in London rather than at Geneva," spent $38,000 to convert London's new Geological Museum to the Conference's use (TIME, June 19). The Guild Hall banquet to the Conference cost $10,000 and His Majesty's Government estimated last week that $250,000 had been spent on official hospitality. With every Great Power spending more than $200,000 on its delegation, correspondents estimated the total conference cost last week at more than $5,000,000. Despite record London heat this summer the 2,000 delegates, experts and secretaries drank far less at the Conference's Long Bar than the optimistic concessionaires had expected. Chief Bartender "Jock" mournfully reported last week that they drank only 12,000 lager beers, only 3,000 gin fizzes, those being the most popular refreshers.

*Observers at the Conference eyed with interest stocky, rufous, sly-smiling President Leon Fraser of the B. I. S. Would he pop a plan for world finance before the Conference broke up? "Only like a hat trick at the last moment, if at all," was his evasive answer. And he popped no plan.

/-Which the U. S. is still unwilling to do.

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