Believe It or Not

A take it or leave it offer -and a surprisingly generous one -was made to Germany by the Allies last week, according to the press bureau of the German delegation to the second Dawes Committee in Paris (TIME, Jan 14 et seq.). Whereas under the Dawes Plan the Reich is scheduled to pay in reparations $595,000,000 yearly, the Germans said they had been offered a cut to $420,000,000.

Hitherto Germany's representative -her famed "Iron Man," Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank -had hung doggedly to $332,000,000 as the greatest sum the Reich could possibly pay. Last week, however, he appeared so struck by the figure $420,000,000 that, clapping on a Hamburg hat and greatcoat, he caught the Nord Express for Germany.

In Berlin florid Minister of Finance Rudolph Hilferding hastily assembled an informal and secret conference of richest Junkers and tycoons to confer with the tall, imperious president of the Reichsbank when he arrived. In the Fatherland, where such an assemblage represents the colossal vested interests of a score of banking and industrial trusts, it does not take long to sound out the opinions of ''big business." Therefore after only the briefest conference, "Iron Man" Hjalmar Schacht boarded the Nord Express for Paris, appearing to be, as usual, somewhat less gracious and communicative than a snapping turtle.

The press bureaus of the Allied delegations at this point issued unanimously the surprising statement that responsibility for the story of a $420,000,000 offer by the Allies must rest with Germany alone.

Since all sessions of the second Dawes Committee are secret -with no minutes or stenographic notes kept -the word of Germany is presumably as good as that of any other great power. "Believe it or not."

Keen observers suspected from the first that something was amiss, because the "scoop" on the $420,000,000 offer was given to the Associated Press. Previously the inside news track on everything connected with the second Dawes Committee has been held by the New York Herald Tribune. This paper received as an exclusive "scoop" the paramount story that J. P. Morgan and Owen D. Young would represent the U.S. in Paris (TIME, Jan. 28). By way of humble return for so great a bounty, the Herald Tribune was the only paper to print, on its first page and in full, the following Monday morning, a prolix and tedious address by Mr. Young at a Manhattan church on Sunday night. Last week the Herald Tribune, unsuspicious, printed the Associated Press scoop, correcting it next day with an exclusive despatch from the very fountain head of second Dawes Committee sure-dope.

Bellhops. Scandalous to logically and literally minded Latins was the jocular organization, last week, by associates and assistants of the U.S. delegation, of what they proceeded to call "The Bellhops' Club." With untempered levity the self-styled "Hops" elected as their "Chief Bellhop" the famed Yankee lawyer who as Commissioner General of the League of Nations for Hungary stabilized the finances of that nation -Jeremiah Smith Jr. By-laws provide for the "exclusion of any Bellhop caught working," and the purpose of the organization seemed to be frequent luncheons at the Hotel George V de luxe seat of the second Dawes Committee. Charter Bellhops include: 1) Stuart Crocker, a General Electric associate of Chairman of the Second Dawes Committee Owen D. Young; 2) Frederick Bate, Secretary of the Committee; 3) M. de Sanchez of the Morgan Company; 4) Leon Fraser, Paris representative of Agent General of Reparations Seymour Parker Gilbert. In thus projecting on a higher plane the luncheon club habits of Babbitts, these junior tycoons confirmed the fixed belief of Frenchmen that "Americans are all alike."

Tycoons. While the Bellhops hopped, the major figures of the U.S. delegation pursued more august courses. J. Pierpont Morgan spent part of the week with Parisian vendors of nearly priceless medieval illuminated manuscripts. Tycoons Owen D. Young and his alternate, Thomas Nelson Perkins, sped out to Cherbourg to meet the Olympic and their wives. Mr. & Mrs. Thomas W. Lament kept up their round of smart dinners, many with artists and litterateurs of the left bank.