"This Word 'Conference' . . . !"

Last gasps of the World Monetary & Economic Conference before its scheduled adjournment in London this week:

P: Australia's sleek, vigorous, hawk-featured former Premier Stanley Melbourne Bruce was first Chief Delegate to explode in a Conference session: "This Conference is a failure!"

For weeks Mr. Bruce had been trying to persuade his Government to enter a "Big Four" wheat acreage restriction pact covering the U. S., Canada, Australia and Argentina (TIME, July 3 et seq.). Last week, fearing to lose personal prestige at home with Australians who have turned against the pact, Mr. Bruce further exploded: "Schemes of this character can be carried out only by Socialist, Fascist or Communist states and Australia certainly does not intend to become any of these!"

P: Scarcely happier was silver Senator Key Pittman of Nevada, the U. S. Delegate who went to the Conference to urge stabilization of the world's currencies on a bimetallic basis of 20% silver and 80% gold. Evidently nettled by President Roosevelt's refusal to stabilize the dollar now on any basis, Senator Pittman said last week: "The world should either adopt a system of managed currencies or return to a metallic basis. Personally I do not believe we have reached the stage where we can have managed currencies. It comes down to a question of whether we have reached the point where we are willing to trust each other to manage currencies. I don't believe we have."

Though his basic proposal had been scrapped by the Conference, Senator Pittman kept open house in his hotel suite for delegates of silver nations, worked furiously to get them to sign a "memorandum of agreement" to steady the world price of silver as a commodity. During a hectic day & evening he finally wrung signatures from delegates of seven other nations, the last to sign (just before midnight) being China's owl-eyed Dr. W. W. Yen. "This," cried perspiring Senator Pittman, "is the most dramatic moment of my life!"

Subject to ratification by the eight governments concerned, the agreement would bind "India, China and Spain as holders of large stocks of silver and . . . Australia, Canada, the United States, Mexico and Peru as the principal producers of silver" not to dump the white metal on the world market for the next four years. Sales of surplus silver by the holding nations would be reduced to about the same extent that the producers agree to withhold silver from the world market by purchasing it for their treasury reserves of coin or bullion.

Experts in London estimated that Senator Pittman would have to persuade the U. S. Congress to buy an additional $12,000,000 worth of silver for treasury purposes per year in order to make the scheme work.* His "personal triumph" in rescuing something from the silver stalemate spurred the "Big Four" wheat nations into efforts to conclude a face-saving "agreement in principle" or, failing that, to set up in London a Permanent Wheat Advisory Council.

P:, It has often been suggested that President Roosevelt may have sent Secretary of State Cordell Hull to the London Conference to cure him of his free trade ideas. In London the Chief U. S. Delegate achieved a masterly last-minute straddle. If and when the full Conference meets again it will take up a 1,200-word memorandum on "commercial policy" presented by Mr. Hull last week. Sounding off as a free trade blast, it includes a reservation to permit the most thoroughgoing economic nationalism.

The Blast: Mr. Hull proposed that all nations "undertake to reach an agreement first, in a negative way, of ceasing to erect new barriers [to trade] and then, in a positive way, of progressive reduction of existing barriers."

The Reservation: The Hull proposal shall not affect "new or additional measures of an emergency character which by raising wages, shortening hours and improving conditions of labor have resulted in increased costs and prices."

P: The Conference sub-committees on sugar, coffee, tin and cocoa adjourned in disagreement.

P: From Rome last week Premier Benito Mussolini polished off the Conference thus: "I believe that for the moral and political prestige of the nations it would be advisable to place an embargo on conferences. . . . This word 'conference' must disappear from the dictionary of contemporary international politics. It must be forgotten. Only by abstinence is an abuse corrected." Disagreeing flatly with Il Duce, the Conference steering committee voted to keep itself permanently in being at London, committee nations being represented by their permanent Ambassadors to the Court of St. James's after their regular delegates go home.

* Last year the Treasury bought only $301,737 worth of silver.

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