(See front cover)
Let observation with extensive view
Survey mankind, from China to Peru.
—Dr. Johnson.
From 35 countries, 1,000 business leaders went to Washington, D. C. last week, surveyed with extensive view what their president, onetime Belgian Prime Minister Georges Theunis, called THIS UNIVERSAL CRISIS. Never before since Business began have businessmen from almost everywhere publicly acknowledged that almost everywhere there is Depression, resolutely set themselves to grapple 1,000 strong with the economic troubles not of one race or region but of all mankind.
The great grapple was exciting. Officially it was termed the Sixth Biennial Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce (I. C. C.). Grapplers for the U. S. included President Hoover, Secretary Mellon and two vigorous Chicago citizens, Lawyer Silas Hardy Strawn, Chief U. S. Delegate to the Conference, and persuasive Melvin Alvah ("Mel") Traylor, president of Chicago's First National Bank, famed for his able work in setting up Europe's Bank for International Settlements (TIME Sept. 23, 1929, et seq.).
The game of Messrs Hoover, Mellon, Strawn and Traylor last week was defensive. They were out to block efforts by European business leaders to stampede the Congress against (U. S.) high tariffs and in favor of (U. S.) cancellation of War debts.
War Debt Grapple. Just so long and no longer will a group of European businessmen keep still about "Uncle Shylock.'' The Hoover and Mellon speeches (see below), the daily struggles of Messrs Strawn and Traylor to steer the Congress steering committee, merely postponed the inevitable. Germans grumbled all week behind the scenes about what they now call not War debts but "international obligations.'' The French and Italians got in their able digs. But eventually the British Delegation took over in a fatherly way the job of making U. S. expectations that Europe will pay part of what she owes, seem as niggardly, as ungracious and as hateful as possible in U. S. eyes.
"The people of the great nation whose guests we are," declared British Delegate Henry Bell, a director of Lloyds Bank, Ltd. "are magnificent hosts, but they are awfully poor customers. . . . America sells twice as much to Europe as it will take in exchange. We come here today— I am sure without offending our friends at all—to put it up to them . . . whether they don't feel that in regard to [Europe's] debt . . . a rather larger, a rather kinder, a rather better attitude might be taken."
As well might U. S. statesmen call on Europe to take a rather larger, a rather kinder, a rather better attitude. But the only direct U. S. rebuttal in Washington last week was a yelp of mental pain, quite lacking in dignified rebuke or injured moral rectitude. Yelped Representative Bertrand H. Snell, onetime upstate New York cheesemaker, chairman of the House Rules Committee: "Why is it that when a group of internationalists get together, they always decide that Uncle Sam must be the goat?"