The Hoover Week

President Hoover found himself in an uncomfortable position last week as a result of the Lausanne Conference at which German Reparations were scaled down to $714,000,000 or 1-c- on the original $1 (see p. 13). Officially the U. S. Government refuses to recognize any connection be tween Germany's indemnity to the Allies and the Allies' repayment of War Debts to the U. S. Yet all the world knows that Reparations are the source of European debt payments to the U. S. The President has declared against cancellation but not against reconsideration of debtor nations' "capacity to pay." The Lausanne agreement sharply shrinks that capacity. The next step would be appeals to the U. S. to cut debts. Last week the Senate began to growl a warning to Europe. The President's dearest hope was that debtor nations would have the good sense to keep out of Washington until after Nov. 8 lest they complicate his campaign with an international issue.

P:Chairman O'Connor of the Shipping Board proposed to President Hoover a year's moratorium on the $111,000,000 worth of Government loans to the U. S. Merchant Marine.

P:President Hoover again asked Congress to give him $120,000 to continue the President's Organization on Unemployment Relief, headed by Walter Sherman Gifford, A. T. & T. president. This appropriation was once rejected by Congress as a waste of money. Argued the President: "Should this organization be discontinued, not only would its important functions of stimulation of private giving be destroyed but there would be grave danger of volunteer groups concluding that [their] services were no longer necessary." P:Vetoed by the President: a $2,100,000,000 unemployment relief bill (see col. 2). P:President Hoover recommended, in an unexpected message to Congress, that Eugene Meyer and Paul Bestor, Farm Loan Commissioner, be removed as ex-officio directors of the R. F. C. because their added duties have become too burdensome. He also recommended that the board be increased to eight with no more than four directors belonging to one party. P:Signed by the President: a $175,000,000 appropriation for the Agriculture Department; a $1,056,000,000 appropriation for the Treasury and Post Office Departments; a bill turning 45,000,000 bu. of wheat, 500,000 bales of cotton from the Farm Board to the Red Cross for needy relief; a bill providing a 20-year penalty for sending kidnapping or ransom letters through the mails.

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