Cause for Resentment

Very few U. S. citizens resented Great Britain's payment last Dec. 15 of $95,550,000 to the U. S. Treasury (TIME, Dec. 26).

"If I were an American, I should have resented that!" cried jaunty Baron Marley of Marley, stepping off the Berengaria in Manhattan last week. Explaining himself to bewildered ship newshawks, Lord Marley recalled that Britain's gold was not sent strictly as a payment under the old War Debt agreement but carried a British reservation declaring it to be part of any sum which His Majesty's Government may pay under a new agreement to settle War Debts finally.

"It was extremely tactless," said Lord Marley, "for the British Government to make a payment and then say it was not a payment under the old agreement. . . . America should now hold out a carrot to the European donkey, promising [debt] cancellation if America's demands for disarmament are carried out."

As the holder of a D. S. C., Lord Marley is one of Britain's official war heroes. As chief Labor Party whip in the House of Lords, he is a thorn* in the side of onetime Laborite James Ramsay MacDonald who may soon travel to the U. S. again to dicker debts with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Last week the debt policy of Scot MacDonald, who has never pretended to have a head for figures, was announced for him by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, arch-Conservative Neville Chamberlain.

Speaking to the Chamber of Commerce at Leeds, but addressing the U. S. public, tall, stern Mr. Chamberlain rejected all bargaining (carrot & donkey), ignored disarmament, observed: "We believe that the total cancellation of War Debts and Reparations would be the best thing that could happen to the world as a whole."

"If that is going further than American public opinion is yet prepared to accept," continued Chancellor Chamberlain, then Great Britain will enter negotiations on two conditions: 1) any settlement reached must be final; 2) whatever sum the Allies agree to pay in War Debts must be so small that it "will not involve a resumption of the [Allied] claim on Germany for Reparations, which it was the object of the Lausanne settlement last year to end." At Lausanne the Allies promised to forgive Germany all but 1-c- on $1 of her Reparations debt IF they were similarly forgiven their War Debts by the U. S., which would thus be the ultimate loser (TIME, July 18). In Washington the Chamberlain speech was ipecac last week to Senators who retched at the Chancellor's bland assertion that what he proposed is "best for the world."

In the Senate, white-crested Hiram Johnson, the California Republican who bolted his party to campaign for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, shouted that the U. S. has everything to lose, nothing to gain by entering the War Debt parleys which Mr. Roosevelt specifically approves. Flaying the British Chancellor, Senator Johnson accused cold, cultured Neville Chamberlain of possessing what no member of the historic House of Chamberlain was ever ashamed to have--a superiority complex.

* Of his peers glib Lord Marley said last week, "We have 700 peers and three make a quorum of the House of Lords. It is 200 years out of date and I don't know why it is kept going. I am in favor of complete abolition of the House of Lords and its maintenance as a museum."

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