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From the day the Conference opened they had been pro-Roosevelt, without at times knowing precisely what that meant, except something active and exciting. As the President's policy of forcing business recovery by means of a declining dollar, rising prices and an unprecedented public works program had crystallized, so had Dominion sentiment—in the same mold. Led by Premier Richard Bedford Bennett of Canada the Dominions clamored at London last week for some devaluation of sterling, some encouragement from the British Government which would enable them to float loans for Dominion public works in the London market. In the case of sterling, hawk-nosed Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain continued to use his huge secret Exchange Equalization Fund to keep the pound pegged at a value of approximately 85 gold standard French francs. As to public works, the Dominions were loftily put in their place by President of the Board of Trade Walter Runciman. "We cannot participate in any such scheme," he told a special meeting of the Conference's Economic Committee, "and if we are asked to lend money for it the answer is in the negative." With a British Empire deadlock as well as a world deadlock thus jamming the Conference last week, members of the U. S. delegation booked passage home, and all delegates prepared innocuous speeches to be delivered at the face-saving plenary session July 27. Meanwhile Chancellor Chamberlain, feeling that he was getting a ''bad press" in the Dominions and conscious that his austere personality renders him unpopular overseas, unbent and presented the Press with probably the first "human interest" statement he ever made in his life. It concerned Mrs. Chamberlain who walks arm in arm with her husband nearly every day as he strides across St. James's Park to his office. Awkwardly, with an affectionate squeeze of his wife's arm, the Chancellor said, "She has shared all my plans. She has been privy to all my secrets and she has never divulged one. She has rejoiced in my successes, she has encouraged me in my disappointments, she has guided me with her counsel, she has warned me off dangerous courses and she has never allowed me to forget that humanity underlies all politics. No politician could owe more to his helpmate than I do."
In Manhattan, utter Conference frustration was reflected in the mood of Professor Raymond Moley, President Roosevelt's chief Brain-Truster, when he returned on the S. S. Manhattan last week. Cornered in the palm room, he answered most questions with, "I do not know"; others with, "Hey, Herbert!" or "Help, Herbert!"
Promptly red-haired Herbert Bayard Swope, ebullient onetime executive editor of the New York World who accompanied Professor Moley to London, would leap to the rescue with offside chatter about, for example, New York's onetime Mayor James J. Walker who is covering the Conference for Hearstpapers. "Jimmy Walker is working like a fool!" cried Companion Swope, covering one of Professor Moley's retreats into silence. "He thinks he's a real newspaper man!"