WORLD CONFERENCE: No More Chatter!

In London last week Sweden's pert, petite Princess Ingrid thought she would have a look at the World Monetary & Economic Conference. She went to the brand new white stone edifice with imposing classic columns which was built as London's Geological Museum but converted just before completion to house the Conference (TIME, June 19). Entering incognito, Her Royal Highness poked about. She found most of the committee rooms empty, a few bored statesmen arguing in others. Taken in tow by a Conference doorman she was led to what is eventually to be the Museum's Great Hall of Fossils. "This is the Conference, miss," said the man respectfully. "Right there His Majesty the King stood when he opened this Conference of 66 nations." Princess Ingrid saw only rows of empty seats and three charwomen dusting them off. "But where is the Conference?" she cried. "Surely there is more to see than this!" Next day, as the Conference quietly disintegrated rather than adjourned, there was even less to see. White-mustached Italian Finance Minister Guido Jung had hopped into a plane and gone back to Rome. Knife-featured French Finance Minister Georges Bonnet had caught a Channel boat for Paris, remarking politely not upon the fact that the Conference statesmen had almost completely disagreed, but instead that, "we have achieved a perfect comprehension of each others' thoughts." This comprehension had resulted in agreement on just one thing: the Conference, after holding a final plenary session at which speakers of all nations will spout on July 27, must then adjourn. As president of the Conference, Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald declared that the Conference will surely reconvene next October, but a majority of delegates felt unquestionably that it was dead. Pittman's Plight. Who killed Cock Conference? Everyone except the U. S. delegation privately pinned this honor on President Roosevelt. His refusal to negotiate either stabilization of currencies (TIME, July 10) or even "steadying" of the dollar (TIME, July 17) created an atmosphere in which the Conference concluded that it could not tackle its second great problem, reduction of tariffs. Reason : tariffs are expressed in money and so long as currencies are gyrating any agreements about tariffs would be merely hypothetical, being based on future monetary stability at levels now unguessable. Since no delegation wished to blame any other publicly for anything, last week was spent and the coming week was expected to pass in committee debates on such innocuous topics as Senator Key Pittman's silver resolution. "I've rewritten the draft of it 15 times," he confessed. "It is getting so I don't recognize it any more. We may get somewhere—I hope we do—but I'm no bleating optimist any more!" "We Cannot Participate!" With the chief Continental delegates mostly back on the Continent (where Germany's blunt Dr. Hjalmar Schacht said last week that the motto of future conferences ought to be "No More Chatter!") a real issue developed in London between the Mother Country and her Dominions.