National Affairs: Couch & Coach

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Ranged around to help Dr. Moley help the President was a corps of U. S. sub-experts, chief among them William Christian Bullitt, veteran of the Paris Peace Conference and unofficial man-about-Europe whom President Roosevelt fortnight ago put back into the State Department as a special assistant to Secretary Hull; James Paul Warburg, able banking son of an able banking father; and Charles William Taussig, head of American Molasses Co., a minor member of the Roosevelt "Brain Trust'' during the cam- paign. James Warburg's father was the late Paul Moritz Warburg, member of the first Federal Reserve Board. James first saw light in Germany 36 years ago. A Harvard man, he served his banking apprenticeship in Boston, Washington, Manhattan, emerged as vice president of In- ternational Acceptance Bank, is today vice chairman of Bank of Manhattan Co. On Broadway he is known as Paul James whose lyrics, with music by his trim wife, Kay Swift, helped to make the first Little Show and Fine & Dandy successful. Last year he advised a House committee to cut the dollar's gold coverage from 40% to 35% or 30% and make up the difference in silver. He is now being considered by President Roosevelt as Undersecretary of the Treasury. Mr. Taussig's sugar business has given him wide knowledge of trade and tariff problems, on which President Roosevelt has drawn heavily. Also 36, he is smooth, polished, clever. The job of the sub-experts was to nail down indisputable facts with the foreign experts and pass their composite work along to the White House. What was the world silver situation? Dr. Moley & colleagues would gather all available silver data, march into a conference room at the State Department, sit down around a table with a corps of British experts. They would compare their statistics, debate discrepancies, argue unknown quantities and agree on a set of figures about silver which both the President and Prime Minister MacDonald could accept for their broad discussion of policy. A few hours later Dr. Moley would lead his sub-experts into a second room to do the same thing with the French on tariffs, then into a third room to settle wheat matters with the Canadians, finally back to the first room to take up currency with the British. These rounds were not flashy enterprises to make newspaper headlines; they were a diplomatic necessity on which the White House couch talks were based. Let the President hesitate on a detail of India's silver holdings or France's light artillery or Canada's tariff administration—and Expert Moley was close at his side to supply the exact information. Once or twice a day during the week President Roosevelt and his visiting statesmen would issue joint White House communiques about their talks. Like most communiques, these were more concealing than revealing. They dealt almost wholly in generalities. One told how President Roosevelt and Mr. MacDonald had laid the basis of a "clearer understanding" on War Debts but, in the next breath, denied that "any plan or settlement is under way." The President and Mr. Bennett had "a very helpful exchange of views." The President and M. Herriot came to "as complete an understanding as possible between our two countries in regard to our common problems" but left "definite agreements" to the World Conference. Mr. MacDonald explained in his farewell

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