MR. MACDONALD MEETS THIRD WEEK

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 147, 24 June 1933, Page 9

MR. MACDONALD MEETS THIRD WEEK

"A VERY BUOYANT AND HOPEFUL HEART"

FOOLISH TO SUGGEST ADJOURNMENT

COMMITTEES IN FULL WORKING ORDER

(British OIBc tal Wireless.) (Received June 24, 11 a.m.) RUGBY, June 23. Mr. Ramsay Mac Donald, as President. of lhe League of Nations Monetary and Economic Conference, declared in an address to the Press this afternoon that he was meeting the third week of the Conference with a very buoyant and hopeful heart. He was - not discouraged by the United States attitude, towards the proposals for a temporary stabilisation of currencies, which he had described as a little setback, adding that he never felt there was very much in it. American conditions were for the moment very difficult-in relation to the attempt to arrive at temporary stabilisation. , POSITION IN UNITED STATES The United States memorandum showed clearly what the position was in that country. Although it was. an open question, many responsible men, earnestly working for the success of the Conference, felt that the final outcome of temporary stabilisation became doubtful, if it tended to break the upward tendency of prices in the United States. The situation left by yesterday's Note was not at all cloudy or uncertain. It enabled them to go on with their work, and they were doing-so. There was a suggestion abroad that the Conference should adjourn. He could imagine no more foolish suggestion to be made at this moment. Recalling the efforts of the last twelve months to get the Conference convened, he declared that, if they were to adjourn now with a view to resuniing in the autumn, the chanceswere that the situation, instead of being better, would be considerably worse. Nothing could have a worse effect than such an adjournment upon the determination of practically the whole of the nations of the world to get some spirit of settlement. v "THE CONFERENCE IS GOING ON" "The Conference is going on," he declared emphatically. There were interests perhaps who wanted to destroy the Conference, but he hoped the Press would readily resist that sort of influence. Conferences knew they were slow-working machines, and that the end of the second week was always the time when, perhaps, pessimism began to show itself, as language and other difficulties by that time had made themselves felt. He had not at this Conference felt depressed, as he was on certain days when the Lausanne Conference was trembling in the balance. Next week would be one of co-ordination, and the committees would acquire some sense of the bigness of the work on which they were engaged. Those committees were now in full working order.