Evening Post. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1933. "PASSING HIM THE BABY"

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 36, 13 February 1933, Page 6

Evening Post. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1933. "PASSING HIM THE BABY"

A b l; p a n, S an" batch of opinions Winch is cabled from Washington today is described as " a further crystallisation, apparently, of the American, attitude that Europe must make concessions for any modification of the war debts." Though these opinions make unpleasant reading they should serve the salutary purposr of chfekins; the too sanguine expectations that have been excited outsjde of the United States by the power of the British Note of the ■irt December and the common sense and goodwill displayed in the "bipartisan" arrangement which has allowed the President-elect to get his negotiations officially in train while Mr. Hoover is still in office. The |;tone of these representative utterances suggests that even with the aid ot the running start that he will thus be enabled to make on the 4th March the new President will have estab-' lisned a world's record if he has made any effective progress by the 15th June. And if on that date the j/°P, ean debtors of America make default, as in the absence of a settlement they undoubtedly will, then they are solemnly warnad by a man who holds a high position in Mr. Hoosevelt's party, and .will doubtless climb higher still, when the new Congress meets, that their repudiation will be regarded as an "unfriendly act" and is sure to be followed by "adequate measures of re, italiation."

Such is the ultimatum addressed; by Mr. H. T. Rainey, the Democratic v leader in the.House of Representatives, to Great Britain and the otherl debtors of the United States, and it is to be noted that his immediate audience was not a mass meeting but the Washington College of Law. The distinction between thinking and unthinking America in which refuge is sometimes sought—a distinction of little value at the best since Congress does not represent the thinking minority, and belongs to the majority itself—has therefore no application here. If there,is no reason to suppose even that any substantial portion of Mr. Rainey's university audience dissented from his strong opposition to any drastic scalingdown of the war debts, it is fortunately equally unnecessary to assume that the majority who agree with him throughout the country would be prepared in the event of repudiation to give his threat the construction which such language is accustomed to receive. "Unfriendly act" and "adequate measures of retaliation" are the kind of talk that Austria addressed to Serbia after the crime of Serajevo, except that the second bf these phrases would per-' haps have been a little too blunt even for Austria with a friend "in j shining armour" behind her. But | there will be no need for the Admiralty to increase its estimates as an insurance against one of the j risks of repudiation.1 Mr. Rainey does not want war, nor do any of hig countrymen, nor did he mean j war. He. meant to talk tall, but he j succeeded in talking even taller than he^ meant. His ignorance of economics and of human nature must, however? be as gross as his ignorance of diplomatic usage. His "adequate measures of retaliation," which would, of course, in turn be adequately retaliated would involve Europe and America in tariff wars and other mutual restrictions which must be equally ruinous to both, and might not improbably provoke a real war to finish us all off.

. Of more serious significance than Mr. Rainey *s heavy hittjng is the plain and entirely inoffensive argument quoted from a speech of Mr. Ogden Mills at Kansas City. As Secretary of the Treasury,.Mr. Mills speaks on a matter of this kind with an authority second only to that of the President himself, and though he will retire with the President in less than three weeks, he will still speak then, as he speaks now, for a large body of thoughtful and instructed American opinion. He represents the very point of view from which Britain may reasonably expect understanding and sympathy, but this expectation is disappointed by the remarks that are quoted in our-Washington message.

The American people, says Mr. Mills, are entitled to compensatory advantages for any sacrifices they may be called upon to make. . . . , Debtor nations can fairly be asked to make definite contributions to a common pro-

gramme intended to remove tho barriers ■which now stand in the way of returning prosperity. ■ . ' *.

It is perfectly reasonable that debtor nations should be Called upon to make definite contributions to a common programme designed for the removal of mutual barriers, and none of them will be more willing than Britain to contribute liberally to that programme, or better pleased to see the United States—hitherto the most powerfully obstructive of all—taking up this vital work, in earnest. But has Britain or France any. special call as a debtor-nation to take a hand in this^ general programme? or has the United States any special call as a creditor nation? Are they not all equally concerned as trading nations in this general >york, and are not the other trading nations, to which the relation of debtor and creditor does not apply, equally concerned too? It certainly looks as though Mr. Mills was mixing war. debts with the general work of the Economic Gdnference in his argument, and when -he speaks of his countrymen as "entitled to compensatory advantages for any sacrifices they may be called upon to make," he is beyond question falling into their fundamental fallacy—the assumption that they are being called upon to make sacrifices for the benefit of their debtors. The British Government 'was at great pains to prove in its Note that the process of debt-collecting is equally damaging to both Governments concerned, but still, as Mr. J. A. Spender writes in the "News-Chronicle,"', the American man in the street believes that "we are, as he puts it, 'passing him the baby.'" •'••''■

If (says Mr. Spender) .we. can get him to believe that there is, no baby to pass, that we have each of us in Europe, after trying for years to hold this baby, come to the conclusion that we had far better drop it and" drown it, he will be much more likely to listen than if we pose as noble people pursuing his interests. A brief statement of the ease showing the amounts which wo have had to mop up into our own National Debt, in default of recovery from our Allies and the- Germans, is what I think is most needed at the moment. . . . Let us not pretend that it is generosity, chivalry, or anything but sheer necessity which has driyon Europeans to tho conclusion that their debts are irrecoverable. We should all have liked to recover them if we could have done so, and we have Only not done so because we believe recovery to be impossible in .the circumstances of international trade. What we ask America to consider is whether their experience is likely to be different from ours.

It is not only -the American man in the street, but the man in the White House and the men in Congress who think that Europe is "passing them the baby."