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Secretary Mills who sped to the Mayflower to deliver it to Governor Roosevelt. The President-elect was just leaving for the station to continue his journey to Georgia. Promising an answer later he hurriedly summoned Bernard Mannes Baruch, Democracy's supreme financial adviser, asked him to ride part way South with him to discuss the President's statement. Mr. Baruch consented and as the Roosevelt private car rolled down through Virginia a conference of high state was held in the observation parlor. Besides Mr. Baruch, Governor Roosevelt had the assistance of Professor Moley. William H. Woodin (American Car & Foundry) and Sumner Wells. The sun went down across the brown fields before they were settled upon a reply. At Lynchburg. where Mr. Baruch left the train, the Roosevelt statement was telegraphed back to Washington for release.
Both the international mind of Adviser Baruch and the hinterland mind of Speaker Garner, who had advised Governor Roosevelt to take care not to cross Congress at the outset, could be detected in this first Roosevelt state paper. Unlike the Congress which had shut its ears and mind to all debt talk, the President-elect agreed with the President: "I firmly believe in the principle that an individual debtor should at all times have access to the creditor; that he should have an opportunity to lay facts and representations before the creditor and that the creditor always should give courteous, sympathetic and thoughtful consideration. . . . This rule is a basic obligation of civilization. It applies to nations as well as to individuals."
But Governor Roosevelt and President Hoover parted company over the method of dealing with debtors. Where President Hoover wanted to shift the question to another commission, the President-elect held with Congress that ''the most convenient and effective contacts can be made through the existing agencies and constituted channels of diplomatic intercourse. ... No action by Congress has limited or can limit the Constitutional power of the President to carry on diplomatic contacts and conversation." U. S. Constitutionalists hailed this Roosevelt stand as an important reversion to the historic U. S. method of dealing with foreign governments.
To Britain. France and other debtor powers the State Department dispatched notes to the effect that the U. S. would expect full payment Dec. 15 and that the President would recommend another debt commission to Congress. Nothing was said about the certain rejection by Congress of this recommendation. Secretary Stimson's language to Britain made it plain that the Hoover Administration considered her plight graver than France's or Belgium's, that revision by capacity-to-pay would be likeliest in her case.
Meanwhile the pound sterling hit an all-time low—$3.17!.
* Dec. 15 payments due: Britain $95,550,000; France $19,000,000: Belgium $2,125,000; Poland $3,175,980; Czechoslovakia $1,500,000; Latvia $111,852.