"Room for Gold"

Among prominent London businessmen a notion keeps cropping up that there ought to be a way to buy for Britain immunity from German attack, and that the U. S. might be persuaded to help pay the cost of anything so obviously desirable. This school of British thought was heavily represented last week in the United Kingdom delegation sent to the ninth Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce in Berlin, a genial gathering of some 1,500 delegates from 41 nations. The British soap trust was represented by Chairman F. d'Arcy Cooper of Lever Brothers Ltd. who talked much privately about softsoaping the Germans with gold. But the British delegation's chief public spokesman for this idea was Brewer Arthur Guinness.

"Guarantee us peace," begged Mr. Guinness, "and Germany will find she has no sincerer and no more useful friend in the world than Britain! . . . I have noticed that Dr. Schacht is building a fine new structure for the Reichsbank which has plenty of room for a substantial quantity of gold. Subject to political adjustments, no better investment could be made of some of the gold now hoarded in Threadneedle Street and Kentucky than a loan to Germany!"

Nearest thing to a spokesman in Berlin for the gold billions in the new U. S. strongbox at Fort Knox, Ky. was distinguished-looking President Thomas John Watson of International Business Machines Corp., leader of the U. S. delegation and promptly-elected President of the International Chamber of Commerce. The June issue of Think, International Business Machines' house organ, modestly omits to mention that President Watson was presented to King George VI at a levee during the Coronation period, otherwise is a banner Coronation issue, crammed with 82 pictures of Coronation events and socialites. Facing a full-page picture of Their Majesties, crowned and in full regalia, is President Watson's signed editorial "Service," declaring: "The real leader is an assistant first. . . . Following his Coronation, King George VI gave utterance to a significant statement when he said: 'The highest of distinctions is the service of others.' "

After the Coronation and levee, where President Watson's picture was taken emerging in his Court costume beside some British guardsmen in towering busbies (see cut), Mrs. Watson accompanied her husband on an inspection trip to Paris, for he is U. S. Commissioner General to the French Exposition. The flooding Seine had stopped work on the U. S. Pavilion and energetic Commissioner Watson managed to fit in a quick business trip to Manhattan before speeding back across the Atlantic last week to Berlin.

In the eyes of most U. S. businessmen, the Chamber of Commerce is important locally, the national Chamber of Commerce is a good thing but vaguely so, and the International Chamber of Commerce is also good but even vaguer. Germans last week had marked able President Watson as apt at least to consecrate an issue of Think to the Nazi Reich. They hoped he would speak up loudly in behalf of shipping some Kentucky gold to Germany, and they felt that as President of the I.C.C. he rated the new "Merit Cross" just created by Adolf Hitler and first bestowed on Benito Mussolini (TIME, June 14). Nazis Nos. 1, 2 and 3 (Hitler, Goering and Goebbels) turned out in Berlin to attend the first session of the I.C.C. and not only Mr. Watson but scores of other delegates gave the Nazi salute. But, though nearly everyone except Adolf Hitler applauded a declaration by Minister for National Economy Dr. Hjalmar Schacht that the Reichsbank wants "honest money and honest raw materials," plus a return to the gold standard to end "arbitrarily falsified currencies," the I.C.C. adjourned this week after adopting 25 non-binding "resolutions," none of them containing any suggestion by thoughtful President Watson or anyone else of lending any Kentucky gold to Germany.

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