"Brains"

How did Great Britain stand last week? She stood so firm that King George and Queen Mary could give their minds to suggesting the sort of gowns ladies may wear this year when presented to Their Majesties.

> Two and a half million British unemployed knew with particular poignancy last week where they stood. The spurt of British industry which began when the pound Sterling was taken off gold (TiME, Sept. 28), has now spent itself and British unemployment is rising again until, last week, it had almost reached Britain's all-time unemployment record, scored last September.

Britain still stands off the gold standard. Last week one dealer reported that he was buying 1,000 British goldpieces of -L-i denomination a day, paying for them of course somewhat "more" in paper. Was this legal--this trafficking in gold pieces stamped with the image of the Sovereign-- to make a "paper profit"?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt. Hon. Neville Chamberlain, chose to inform the nation last week that it is legal to sell gold pound pieces (called "sovereigns" and worth 20 gold shillings) for 27 paper shillings or whatever else one can get for them. Instantly "London's Gold Rush" began. Millions of British gold pieces came out of hiding and millions of Britons began to take their "paper profits."

> No propagandist, Mr. T. M. Ainscough, the Senior British Trade Commissioner in India, published last week his 1931 report. During half of that year the ''Gandhi-Irwin Truce" was in effect, and Indian boycotting of British goods was undoubtedly less effective than it has become since St. Gandhi was again jailed (TIME. Jan. 11). Dryly the Senior British Trade Commissioner set down that during 1931 British exports to India declined by more than one third.

"The boycott movement" wrote Commissioner Ainscough "was ostensibly directed against all countries but imports from Japan continued to arrive and were sold in large quantities. . . . The boycott movement against [British] cigarets was very active and extended also to drugs, soaps, cycles, tires, bazaar metals, hardware and certain electrical accessories."

> The new panacea, the one upon which British Hope is pinned today, is Britain's new exclusionist embargo and tariff policy (see Parliament's Week) upon which she counts to reduce her imports. But this is not enough. She must increase her exports. How? The fundamental trouble is with the brains of British businessmen, as H. R. H., the Prince of Wales, told them again last week. They are too slow to master the U. S. methods of salesmanship.

> Politically the British Government was jumpish. The pacific Laborite Government in 1930 postponed for five years the completion of the great Singapore Naval Base as a "necessary economy" (TIME, Nov. 24, 1930). But last week, despite financial troubles, a new decision was taken to complete the base--presumably as a threat to make Japan behave. To this $45,000,000 enterprise, Australia, despite her equally great financial troubles, is glad to contribute.

> Snow, sleet and bitterly cold winds drove across most of Europe, blanketed much of Dear Old England in snow--so beloved by Queen Victoria.

--"Of King George" said,rumors, officially denied.

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