GREAT GATHERING

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 35, 4 May 1927, Page 13

GREAT GATHERING

500 AT GENEVA ECONOMIC CONFERENCE GOOD THAT MAY RESULT By Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright Reed. 10.50 a.m. LONDON, To-day. Over 500 persons have already arrived at Geneva to participate in the Economic Conference opening there on Wednesday. The actual delegates are being accompanied by large staffs of experts, secretaries and typists. The British delegation totals GO, and the French 59. For the first time since the League of Nations was founded three non-members, the United States, Russia and Turkey are participating in the conference with the fullest equality. The proceedings may last a month and are not expected to provide either sensations or light reading. Owing to considerable anti-Russian feeling in many parts of Switzerland in consequence of the Berne ebneessions to Moscow, the Swiss authori ties are taking special precautions to protect the Soviet delegates. They are keeping anti-Bolshevists of Swiss and other* nationalities under observation as well as Russian Royalists. The “Morning Post” says that never in the history of the world have so many leading financiers, economists, bankers, agriculturists, merchants, engineers, sociologists, statesmen, renresentatives of workers and consumers’ organisations assembled There is a good deal of misunderstanding regarding the scope of the conference. Jts purpose is not to conclude agreements or to draft conventions. Delegates are not empowered to commit their Governments. But just as the Dawes Scheme and the Austrian and Hungarian reconstruction programmes were the'outcome of the Brussels Financial Conference, at which no decisions were taken, so among indirect results envisaged from the present conference are industrial cartels, allocation of world trade markets, removal or modifications of tariff barriers, and the abolition or control of dumping.—A. and N.Z.