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Tourists. The U. S. had a favorable trade balance (exports over imports) of more than a billion dollars last year. This asset was liquidated by the spendings abroad of U. S. tourists who, in national economic effect, had a free trip over and back. When the stockmarket crashed, its effect was felt even in Switzerland where resort bookings for U. S. tourists were heavily cancelled, U. S. children withdrawn from Swiss schools.
Cinema. An endless tape bound round and round the world is the U. S. cinema film. Last week Londoners flocked to see Masks of the Devil while Paris and Berlin gaped simultaneously at The Broadway Melody. In the French chamber arose Deputy Gaston Gerard last week to exclaim: "In the domain of the cinema we have become virtual tributaries to American productions. Americans already hail [the talkies] as a vehicle for spreading the English language over the world. It is an immense and implacable effort for intellectual colonization that threatens us."
At the Moulin Rouge in Paris, police quelled a riot of Frenchmen incensed at the discovery that they had paid good francs to see The Fox Movietone Follies— in English.
Missionaries. Christmas spirit was, of course, zealously upheld in many a foreign land by 12,283 U. S. missionaries—8,363 in Asia, 2,160 in Latin America, 1,689 m Africa, 71 in Australia and Oceanica.
Ships. Though U. S. shipping is below normal, two services are noteworthy: United Fruit, most potent and most peaceful colonizer in the Caribbean; Dollar Line, only round-the-world service on a regular bi-weekly schedule.
Raw Material. Biggest quest: Rubber. Blocked in the Philippines by adverse land laws, Harvey Firestone is pushing forward with new plantations in Liberia; Henry Ford has six thousand square miles for rubber production in Brazil; the U. S. Rubber Co.'s plantations in Sumatra and Malaya have grown from 14,000 acres to 135,000 acres in 18 years of production.
Imperial U. S. Not by military force but by economic power does the U. S. exert its imperial will. By shutting off loans to lagging debtors it forced settlement of the War Debts. Its agents administer the finances of Bolivia, Salvador, Liberia, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Santo Domingo. U. S. Citizen Seymour Parker Gilbert holds the purse strings of German Reparations as formulated by U. S. Citizens Charles Gates Dawes and Owen D. Young.
*After disturbances a fortnight ago Haiti was last week quiescent. Political organizations asked President Hoover to supply U. S. supervision for the April elections, as was done last year in Nicaragua. Arrests were only for violation of the 9 p. m. curfew under martial law. President Borno's daughter Madeleine was ceremoniously taken to wife by Daniel Brun, architect. Additional Marines dispatched aboard the U. S. S. Wright were diverted to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, while the U. S. House of Representatives moved to give President Hoover the investigating commission he had asked for (TIME, Dec. 16).