No More Chatter!

In London last week Sweden's pert, petite Princess Ingrid thought she would have a look at the World Monetary & Economic Conference. She went to the brand new white stone edifice with imposing classic columns which was built as London's Geological Museum but converted just before completion to house the Conference (TIME, June 19). Entering incognito, Her Royal Highness poked about. She found most of the committee rooms empty, a few bored statesmen arguing in others. Taken in tow by a Conference doorman she was led to what is eventually to be the Museum's Great Hall of Fossils. "This is the Conference, miss," said the man respectfully. "Right there His Majesty the King stood when he opened this Conference of 66 nations." Princess Ingrid saw only rows of empty seats and three charwomen dusting them off. "But where is the Conference?" she cried. "Surely there is more to see than this!" Next day, as the Conference quietly disintegrated rather than adjourned, there was even less to see. White-mustached Italian Finance Minister Guido Jung had hopped into a plane and gone back to Rome. Knife-featured French Finance Minister Georges Bonnet had caught a Channel boat for Paris, remarking politely not upon the fact that the Conference statesmen had almost completely disagreed, but instead that, "we have achieved a perfect comprehension of each others' thoughts." This comprehension had resulted in agreement on just one thing: the Conference, after holding a final plenary session at which speakers of all nations will spout on July 27, must then adjourn. As president of the Conference, Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald declared that the Conference will surely reconvene next October, but a majority of delegates felt unquestionably that it was dead. Pittman's Plight. Who killed Cock Conference? Everyone except the U. S. delegation privately pinned this honor on President Roosevelt. His refusal to negotiate either stabilization of currencies (TIME, July 10) or even "steadying" of the dollar (TIME, July 17) created an atmosphere in which the Conference concluded that it could not tackle its second great problem, reduction of tariffs. Reason : tariffs are expressed in money and so long as currencies are gyrating any agreements about tariffs would be merely hypothetical, being based on future monetary stability at levels now unguessable. Since no delegation wished to blame any other publicly for anything, last week was spent and the coming week was expected to pass in committee debates on such innocuous topics as Senator Key Pittman's silver resolution. "I've rewritten the draft of it 15 times," he confessed. "It is getting so I don't recognize it any more. We may get somewhere--I hope we do--but I'm no bleating optimist any more!" "We Cannot Participate!" With the chief Continental delegates mostly back on the Continent (where Germany's blunt Dr. Hjalmar Schacht said last week that the motto of future conferences ought to be "No More Chatter!") a real issue developed in London between the Mother Country and her Dominions.

From the day the Conference opened they had been pro-Roosevelt, without at times knowing precisely what that meant, except something active and exciting. As the President's policy of forcing business recovery by means of a declining dollar, rising prices and an unprecedented public works program had crystallized, so had Dominion sentiment--in the same mold. Led by Premier Richard Bedford Bennett of Canada the Dominions clamored at London last week for some devaluation of sterling, some encouragement from the British Government which would enable them to float loans for Dominion public works in the London market. In the case of sterling, hawk-nosed Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain continued to use his huge secret Exchange Equalization Fund to keep the pound pegged at a value of approximately 85 gold standard French francs. As to public works, the Dominions were loftily put in their place by President of the Board of Trade Walter Runciman. "We cannot participate in any such scheme," he told a special meeting of the Conference's Economic Committee, "and if we are asked to lend money for it the answer is in the negative." With a British Empire deadlock as well as a world deadlock thus jamming the Conference last week, members of the U. S. delegation booked passage home, and all delegates prepared innocuous speeches to be delivered at the face-saving plenary session July 27. Meanwhile Chancellor Chamberlain, feeling that he was getting a ''bad press" in the Dominions and conscious that his austere personality renders him unpopular overseas, unbent and presented the Press with probably the first "human interest" statement he ever made in his life. It concerned Mrs. Chamberlain who walks arm in arm with her husband nearly every day as he strides across St. James's Park to his office. Awkwardly, with an affectionate squeeze of his wife's arm, the Chancellor said, "She has shared all my plans. She has been privy to all my secrets and she has never divulged one. She has rejoiced in my successes, she has encouraged me in my disappointments, she has guided me with her counsel, she has warned me off dangerous courses and she has never allowed me to forget that humanity underlies all politics. No politician could owe more to his helpmate than I do."

In Manhattan, utter Conference frustration was reflected in the mood of Professor Raymond Moley, President Roosevelt's chief Brain-Truster, when he returned on the S. S. Manhattan last week. Cornered in the palm room, he answered most questions with, "I do not know"; others with, "Hey, Herbert!" or "Help, Herbert!"

Promptly red-haired Herbert Bayard Swope, ebullient onetime executive editor of the New York World who accompanied Professor Moley to London, would leap to the rescue with offside chatter about, for example, New York's onetime Mayor James J. Walker who is covering the Conference for Hearstpapers. "Jimmy Walker is working like a fool!" cried Companion Swope, covering one of Professor Moley's retreats into silence. "He thinks he's a real newspaper man!"

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