"Goodnight, Goodnight"

Not since Wartime had short, narrow Downing Street been so jammed with reporters from wall to wall. A message from President Roosevelt was expected and delegates of the World Monetary & Economic Conference had been waiting all day for it. Suddenly the Prime Minister's motor car was sighted and word whipped round that the message had come. Scot MacDonald, alighting hatless in full evening dress, stepped inside and tried to calm the delegates, urged them by inference to go home.

"I will wait up for a message from President Roosevelt," he cried, "even if I have to sit up until four in the morning. . . . The moment I hear I shall let you all know. . . . Goodnight. . . . Goodnight all."

During the day before the dollar's gyrations had driven delegates of Europe's six gold standard nations (France, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium & Poland) nearly frantic. They feared they would be forced off gold should the dollar fall much further, and it had already dipped lower (to 76.3-c-) than at any time since 1864. President Roosevelt, they knew, was determined to reject any pact for permanent dollar stabilization, but would he agree to a joint statement pledging the world's central banks to steady the dollar, at least for the duration of the Conference? Such a statement must be carefully worded. Locked in a big room the gold standard statesmen, dubbed "Golders" by London correspondents, wrote in succession seven statements. These were carried one after the other by British Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain into another room. There they were rejected one after another by the U. S. Delegation's acting fiscal expert James P. Warburg. The eighth draft he passed. It was transmitted to the President by Professor Raymond Moley who proved, last week, a great disappointment to the Conference. Delegates had hoped they could get down to business with him and really negotiate. Instead Dr. Moley. bland and self-possessed, talked courteously with everyone but made clear that on all major issues the President must be consulted by cable.

In vain knife-faced French Minister Georges Bonnet fumed. Waiting for the President, he missed the Golden Arrow De Luxe Express to Paris, missed all the afternoon expresses and finally left London at 11 p. m. to toss all night on the Channel with a cabinet meeting in Paris scheduled as soon as he should arrive.

If Scot MacDonald had actually stayed up until he heard from Mr. Roosevelt, he would have gone sleepless all night and propped his eyelids open most of the next day.

When the President replied he fired first a pistol, then a broadside. His pistol shot was to reject the Golders: proposal for steadying the dollar with respect to gold. His broadside came two days later in a cablegram which Secretary of State Cordell Hull, vainly attempting to hide his own amazement, read to the hushed, expectant Delegates.

The President's cable began by scolding the Conference for laying too much stress on money matters, urged it to attack "broader problems." Then in cheery Roosevelt vein, primed with a personal touch, he set forth his money views: "Let me be frank in saying that the United States of America seeks the kind of dollar which a generation hence will have the same purchasing and debt-paying power as the dollar value we hope to attain in the near future. . . . Our broad purpose is permanent stabilization of every nation's currency. . . . When the world works out concerted policies in the majority of nations to produce balanced budgets and living within their means then we can properly discuss a better distribution of the world's gold and silver supply to act as the reserve base of national currencies."

Thus unbalanced budgets, chronic today throughout the world, became officially the Roosevelt Administration's premise for arguing that to stabilize the dollar with respect to gold would at present be premature. And precisely that point made every French delegate mad clear through as he assumed that President Roosevelt's finger was pointed squarely at France as the outstanding gold nation whose budget was not balanced. On the other hand the President came out clearly for stabilization of all currencies with respect to general purchasing power. How this could or should be done he neither said nor hinted.

Since in the Continental view there is no basis for stabilization other than gold, France was promptly joined in wrath by the Italians, Dutch. Swiss, Belgians, Poles. The view of all had already been voiced by the President of France, who normally keeps as aloof as the King of England from all issues. In Besanc,on, President Albert Lebrun arose thus: "How can contracts be made and engagements signed on a monetary basis that varies with events and speculation? To speak of tariff adjustments while moneys are variable is pure Utopia!''

Thus the Conference faced a complete deadlock between the advice of the Presidents of the U. S. and France. Three U. S. delegates were reported to favor adjournment, as were all the "Golders," but white- thatched Conference President James Ramsay MacDonald rushed excitedly about urging the delegates to keep on. Divine Providence, he reminded all and sundry, must surely come to the Conference's aid if all good men would pull together.

Meanwhile an eager, delighted Roosevelt public reread and relished parts of the President's cablegram which the Conference simply ignored, those parts in which he talked turkey to the World in the tone of a brisk uncle brimming with new ideas: "I do not relish . . continuance of the basic economic errors that underlie so much of the present worldwide depression. The world will not long be gulled by a specious fallacy of achieving a temporary and probably artificial stability in foreign exchange on the part of a few large countries only.

"A sound internal economic system of a nation is a greater factor in its well-being than the price of its currency in changing terms of the currencies of other nations.

"It is for this reason that a reduced cost of government, adequate government income, and the ability to service government debts are all so important to ultimate stability.

"So, too, the fetishes of so-called international bankers are being replaced by efforts to plan national currencies with the objective of giving to those currencies a continuing purchasing power which does not greatly vary in terms of commodities and the needs of modern civilization. . . ."

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