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What Chancellor Snowden demanded before he would accept the Young Plan was an increase in the share of Reparations which the Plan allotted to Great Britain. The increase asked by Mr. Snowden was only $11,520,000 per annum, or less than — 25% of the total at which Britain balanced her budget last year (TIME, Aug. 26). France, Belgium, Italy and Japan insisted through the first weeks of Hague haggling that Chancellor Snowden must accept the share allotted Great Britain in the Young Plan as originally drawn, because the British experts on the Young Committee had fully endorsed this arrangement with the consent of the then Conservative British Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. From the first, Chancellor Snowden, representing the newly elected British Labor Cabinet of Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, stubbornly contended that he was not bound in any way by the endorsement of the British experts who helped draw up the Young Plan. In effect he charged that the experts had betrayed Britannia by altering the so-called Spa percentages fixed in 1923 and embodied in the Dawes Plan.
Last week, having haggled the Conference to a standstill, Chancellor Snowden was able to force his foes to yield Great Britain an extra $9,520,000 per year, or 82% of his demand. This extra annuity will be raised partly from the interest on capital sums of German Reparations set aside and guaranteed by France, Belgium, Italy and Japan, and partly by an arrangement whereby Germany agrees to forego certain sums due her from the "overlapping" of the Dawes and Young Plans as the latter supersedes the former.
From Italy shrewd Chancellor Snowden won a concession little noted by correspondents but of immense "talking value" to the British Labor Party. For the next three years the Italian State Railways, which must buy one million tons of coal a year from somewhere, agree to buy it from Great Britain. Not settled was the question of where to set up the general clearing house of the Young Plan called "The International Bank of Settlements" (TIME, June 10). This detail, an important one, was turned over to a continuing subcommittee, thus making it necessary for the conference to convene again, probably next month and probably not at The Hague.
Shoulder High. "Chair him! Chair him!" roared lusty British voices as the channel steamer which brought Chancellor Snowden home docked at Harwich. The fragile, crippled Yorkshireman was pounced upon and "chaired"—carried shoulder-high—to his boat train. Mrs. Snowden watched anxiously.
At London's dingy Liverpool Street Station an official who rushed forward with a wheel chair for the Chancellor was roughly thrust aside. "Good old Phil! we'll carry you home!" roared the crowd, but Mrs. Snowden successfully pleaded that her husband should be "chaired" only to his waiting motor.