Le Monsieur Embarks

Parisians were especially delighted, last week, by a sly little story which came clicking over the cables from Manhattan, just after John Pierpont Morgan and Owen D. Young had embarked on the Aquitania for France, there to sit on the Second Dawes Committee, which will revise the Dawes Plan (TIME, Jan. 14 et seq.}

The little story concerned Le Monsieur. He is America's greatest monsieur, and so there are times when his awful name may not even be mentioned. One of those times was last week when details of Le Monsieur's embarkation were being arranged between 23 Wall St.* and the highest U. S. official of the Cunard Line. On that momentous morning some smart, insidious Frenchman must have gleaned among excited, thrilled Cunard employes his impression that the following telephone conversation took place.

Cunard: "The gentleman's suite is in readiness. I suppose you wish the usual arrangement."

23 Wall: "The gentleman will arrive a little before eleven. We shall have several of our men on the pier."

Cunard: "Excellent. We shall expect the gentleman a little before eleven."

That evening on the Cunard Pier, experienced U. S. reporters noted the "usual arrangements." It is the custom of Le Monsieur never to enter or leave a liner by the ordinary passenger gangplank. Low down on the Aquitania's side a wide, square port was opened, a short, level gangplank was run out from the pier, and, just before eleven, the plank was walked by John Pierpont Morgan.

All other members of the U. S. delegation climbed the long, steep, first class gangway. Lest anyone should attribute pride or ungraciousness to 23 Wall St., Mr. Morgan's partner, Thomas W. Lamont, walked the common plank with Mrs. Lamont ; and both smilingly endured flashlights. Since Mrs. Owen D. Young is ill in Arizona, her tall, potent husband, Chairman of General Electric Co. and Radio Corp. of America, mounted the Aquitania alone, with his loose, powerful stride.

When he too had been flashlighted on the enclosed promenade deck, Mr. Young amiably released the sole statement made by any of the U. S. delegates:

"I beg to repeat my statement of five years ago, at the time of negotiations preceding adoption of the first Dawes plan, and that is that I regard the questions to be settled by our committee to be business questions only. I hope they will be approached in that spirit and with a determination to get a constructive answer speedily."

Hearst papers reported that he added: "Germany is certain to be given greater consideration than at the conferences when the present reparations plan was decided upon. The willingness which they have shown to pay would alone insure that. "I do not mean that this implies there will be any cancellation of reparations, but I do believe Germany's ability to pay will be given marked consideration in arriving at the amount of reparations and the method of payment."

Comparatively little noticed in the Morgan-Young party were two more tycoons: 1) Jeremiah Smith Jr. of Boston, who stabilized the fiscal structure of defeated and seemingly ruined Hungary (TIME, July 5, 1926); 2) Ferdinand Eberstadt of Manhattan, retired partner of Dillon Read & Co., negotiator of numerous titanic post-War loans in Germany. Mr. Young's alternate on the committee, Thomas Nelson Perkins, cancelled his passage at the last moment, remaining in Boston where his son was stricken by pneumonia.

Arriving in Paris, the delegation will be greeted by Governor of the Bank of France Emile Moreau, will join the other delegations representing the Great Powers for the first session of the Second Dawes Committee in the sumptuous and historic Directors' Room of the Bank of France, famed as the "Galerie Doree."/-

Later sessions of the Second Dawes Commission will be held in the Hotel Astoria, which housed the First. Tycoon Young is expected to stop at the Ritz. Twenty-three Wall St. positively refused to intimate where Le Monsieur will stop.

Prior to the delegates' arrival in Paris a flying visit to Governor Moreau of the Bank of France was paid by Governor of the Reichsbank Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, who returned after a brief conference to Berlin. Dr. Schacht was understood to have urged that Germany's Reparations payments to the Allies be so adjusted by the Commission as to be completed within 37 years. No sooner was Dr. Schacht off to Berlin, however, than the French Government intimated their intention to insist that Germany pay over a period of 62 years, the span of the French debt payments to Britain and the U. S. Dr. Schacht's visit to M. Moreau was described as one of "courtesy," intended to break the ice prior to his arrival in Paris at the head of the German delegation.

*The business stationery of J. P. Morgan & Co., intended for personal signatures carries no other letterhead than "23 Wall St." Stationery for all other purposes carries an impressive list of the Morgan Houses in the U. S. and abroad. /-The Hank of France is housed in the Hotel de Toulouse, designed by famed Architect Francois Mansart for the Comte de Toulouse, son of Louis XIV and Mine, de Montespan.