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Cripps first took care of Spaak, who was presiding as chairman of the OEEC group. Cripps told Spaak that he would go along with any liberalization plan that fulfilled one condition: it must not increase the drain of dollars. Spaak agreed. That took him out of the subsequent play, because all the plans for freer exchange of European currencies also involved slightly freer convertibility into dollars.
The liberalizers presented a plan for intra-European payments which had been worked out by Harriman's ECA experts; the dollar cost to Britain would be only 50 million. The British repeated the word "only" in horrified voices, with the expression of an alcoholic's wife on being told that he had had "only" four drinks.
Cripps (who used to make up to $150,000 a year as a lawyer) is too smart to enter a doctrinaire Socialist defense of controls as such. He opposed "automatic flexibility" of exchange through a central pool for multilateral ECA transfers between European nations; Cripps proposed "organized flexibility," which meant continuance of bilateralism. The essential difference was that the liberal plan would lead in the direction of cost competition, which Cripps fears.
Petsche caved in almost immediately because he feared Britain's power to cut down nonessential imports from France. It was soon clear that no drastic changes were in sight; the OEEC leaders agreed to meet again for another try at a payments plan.
Bankerlike? The British victory had more behind it than the old Crippsian skill. To all continental nations, save Belgium and Switzerland, Britain stands in the same creditor relationship that the U.S. has toward the Continent and toward Britain. The Continent now needs British pounds and products more than Britain needs the Continent's currency and products. This weight in the British position can only be balanced if the U.S. throws its super-creditor's weight—hard—on the "liberal" side of the line.
Another source of British strength derives from the "prudent housekeeper" argument. It runs this way: "We all want an economically united Europe and freer trade—and some day, maybe, we'll have it. But today any plan for freer transfer between European currencies will lead to a dollar drain somewhere that Europe can't now afford. If we let the uncontrolled continentals get their hands on our scarce dollars, they will simply buy Cadillacs with them. Really, is that the way to run a bank?"
This argument has a lot of force, since the British as well as the Americans are bankers to the Continent. Its force is somewhat diminished, however, by persistent evidence that the British talk like bankers but think like Socialists. At the Paris OEEC meeting, for instance, one British expert was heard to say: "Yes, I know the loss [in Britain's dollar supply] might be small, but if we don't know, we can't program. My real objection...is that it interferes with the plan." Said another learned Laborite succinctly: "Of course we want competition—but without uncertainty."