End

While U. S. businessmen talked at Paris of a "new epoch" (see p. 44) in Berlin best business minds bent over the farewell report of Seymour Parker Gilbert who recently ceased to be Agent General of Reparations when the duties of that office partly lapsed and were partly merged into the Bank for International Settlements (TIME, May 26). Mr. Gilbert courteously waited until $345,000,000 of Young Plan bonds secured by Germany's promise to pay were successfully floated. Then he released a 350-page report in which more than 100 pages are devoted to flaying the German finance ministry for their chronic habit of loose, slipshod, extravagant budgeting. Last year for a short period, according to Mr. Gilbert, the German government was pledged to spend not only more than they had but more than they could borrow. Only if such methods are replaced by strict, scientific budgeting, he prophesied, will Germany be able to meet all her obligations.

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