Hounds After Norman

Despair last week overcame shy, secretive Montagu Collet Norman, the fox-bearded Governor of the Bank of England whose furtive flitting from continent to continent under assumed names began to seem last summer like the dodging and weaving of a fox with hounds baying at his heels (TIME, Aug. 26).

Reynard Norman was run to earth last week at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in London's stately Mansion House. Stuffily seated around him were many of Mother England's greatest bankers, businessmen and statesmen. Mr. Norman almost never makes a public speech but now, suddenly, the Governor of the Bank of England burst out: "The difficulties of these times are so vast and so unlimited that I approach the subject not only in ignorance but in humility. It is too much for me!

"I wonder if there is any one in the world who can really direct the affairs of the world, or of his country, with any assurance of the result his action will have?

"Who a year ago could have foreseen the position into which we have drifted little by little? First we have been down, then we have been up, then down, then up.

"The confused affairs of the world have brought about a series of events and a general tendency which appear to me at this time as being outside the control of any man and any government and any country.

"I believe that if every country and every government could get together, it would be different, but we do not seem to be able to get together."

Men of strength do not speak thus, even with their backs against the wall. Mr. Norman has been 13 times consecutively Governor of the Bank of England, a strain under which few men could remain strong. Last week in the ghastly moment at the Mansion House, other Britons, stolid and undaunted, stared with vast aplomb at tall, sensitive, grey-bearded Governor Norman--who looks in his habitual floppy black hat less like Britain's foremost banker than like a cross between a Venetian conspirator and a Latin Quarter student. Possibly the stony stares bucked Governor Norman up. He finished his amazing speech in conventional banker fashion: "We must take, for the moment, a short view, but we must plan for the long.

"I am willing to do my best when it comes to the future. I hope we may all see the approach of light at the end of the tunnel. Some people already have been able to point out that light to us.

"I myself see it--somewhat indistinctly."

Pound Slips. Three days before Governor Norman spoke, sterling began to slump suddenly, reached $3.35, a drop of 12 1/2% and the sharpest break since January. Later it recovered, hopping up & down in a 5-c- range. Soon Continental speculators began to sell sterling short on the theory that "Great Britain has decided to meet her debt payment to the United States, due Dec. 15"

Striking back at the speculators a spokesman for His Majesty's Government told correspondents that they might put this cable on the wire: IT IS "AUTHORITATIVELY DENIED TODAY THAT GREAT BRITAIN HAS DECIDED TO PAY.

Indulging in a double negative, the spokesman said that of course His Majesty's Government had not decided not to pay, had decided nothing whatever.

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