G-O-T

President Roosevelt pushed his conversations on the World Economic Conference into new ground last week. Argentina, Italy and Germany had their White House innings. Dr. Tomas A. Le Breton, Argentine Ambassador to France, crossed the Atlantic to talk trade agreements with the President. For Guido Jung. Italian Minister of Finance whom Premier Mussolini had dispatched to Washington as his personal representative, President Roosevelt gave a large State dinner--but without Signor Jung who had been fog-bound in New York harbor. Dr. Hjalmar Schacht came as Adolf Hitler's special envoy. When Victor Ridder, one of the publishers of the New York Stoats-Zeitung, present as an official greeter, tried to press-muzzle him, the tall square-faced president of the Reichsbank resentfully exploded: "When you get through talking, I will talk." Because Italy paid her December War debt to the U. S. without protest or quibble, because the U. S. has supported Italy's disarmament proposals at Geneva, because the two countries have long seen eye to eye on most international issues, President Roosevelt and Minister Jung got on famously. President Roosevelt's principal objective prior to the June 12 opening of the conference in London is an all-round tariff truce so that all nations will start from the present scratch. Minister Jung gladly embraced this proposal. The Italian envoy argued that military disarmament must go hand in hand with economic disarmament. To this President Roosevelt heartily assented. They also agreed that "a fixed measure of exchange values must be re-established in the world and we believe that this measure must be gold." That was President Roosevelt's first public commitment, since he began his world talks three weeks ago, to an international gold exchange. Minister Jung was feeling so good when he left Washington that he jested with newshawks: "If you print my thoughts on economic subjects some Columbia professor will say I'm crazy." Dr. Schacht was not only agreeable to a tariff truce but also favored a general reduction of tariff levels by all powers. Uppermost in his mind, however, was to gain President Roosevelt's moral support for revision of the Versailles Treaty. Such support the President carefully withheld. When Dr. Le Breton left the White House it became known that he and President Roosevelt had started negotiations for a trade agreement which the Argentine envoy would return to Washington in July to sign. What commodities would be involved in a swap between the two countries had yet to be developed by experts. Meanwhile the diplomatic sunshine generated by the White House conversations was intermittently dulled by passing clouds following the return last week of James Ramsay MacDonald to London and Edouard Hcrriot to Paris. Mr. MacDonald's carefully guarded report to the House of Commons on his Washington excursion produced vociferous dissatisfaction. He had failed to bring back a hard & fast plan for cutting War debts: that was all that seemed to matter at the moment. A bill was introduced into the House of Commons which will arm His Majesty's Government for a possible battle between the pound and the dollar by upping the Exchange Equalization Fund from -L-1,150,000,000 to -L-350,000,000.

As if to buck still further the President's international purposes and corner markets in advance. Britain last week signed a trade treaty with Argentina which left the U. S. out in the commercial cold. Setting up a system close to barter, this agreement provided that Britain was to have large tariff advantages and Argentina was to keep its exchange balances tied up in London. Similar agreements were in the making with Norway and Sweden. "Sterlingaria," the international domain tied to the British pound, was getting up its storm fences for more economic war.

Moreover Mr. MacDonald found Tory Cabinet members apparently dead set against such a tariff truce as President Roosevelt was advocating. Most of them thought the London Conference would certainly fail; and they would not see Britain make sacrifices for a "lost cause." Nevertheless, Norman Davis. U. S. Ambassador-at-Large, got orders from Washington to stick until some sort of tariff agreement was reached. And finally the cloud over London broke. An agreement was reached, between Messrs. Davis, MacDonald and Walter Runciman. president of the Board of Trade, and Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon, subject to settlement of details.

That M. Herriot did not bring a debt settlement was a bitter pill for most Frenchmen who counted on nothing less than a moratorium. Over the weekend, after his arrival, the world was momentarily startled by the news that France might go off the gold standard. This was followed by a suggestion from the Quai d'Orsay, traced back to the French financial attache at Washington and thence to a mysterious source which might have been U. S., British, French. Persian or Tasmanian--to the effect that France settle her debt in a lump payment with (lure to western Senators) silver at 20-to-1. The Roosevelt Administration flatly denied complicity. Meanwhile the Daladier Cabinet voted against making its debt payment due last December without a guarantee that the June payment be waived. Meanwhile President Roosevelt's home cloud, the one that hung over Capitol Hill, seemed more likely than ever before to lift, giving the President the one thing he needs most for the World Conference-- delegated authority to act directly on tariffs and debts after Congress has adjourned. In his speech to the U. S. Chamber of Commerce (see p. 41) he revealed his determination when he declared: "I remember a remarkable conversation between the Prime Minister of Great Britain and myself. We were talking of the hope of the world, and we talked in terms of that hope for a few sentences. I looked at him and said: " 'Mr. MacDonald, we've got to do it.' "And he looked at me and said: " 'That's an old Scotch word--got--it's good enough for me.' "So from now on there will be a new international word--G-O-T."

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