The Evening Star FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 1933. MR MACDONALD AND PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

Evening Star, Issue 21381, 7 April 1933, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 1933. MR MACDONALD AND PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT.

The suggestion of holding a World Economic Conference has hung lire, for it ante-dated the Ottawa Conference. It is now announced that Mr Ramsay MacDonald is .leaving England next week to talk over various vital matters with President Roosevelt. First and foremost, of course, there will be the question of the next instalment of war debt, due by Britain to America in Juno. But the form in which America has heretofore virtually insisted on payment, by making alternative forms impracticable, necessitates discussion rf several other matters, which may be broadly grouped as the obstacles to the resumption of international trade on something approaching pre-war lines. As long ago as mid-February Mr MacDonald, in reply to a question in tho House of Commons, said:— , As has already been announced, u'd have agreed that, concurrently with the discussion of war debts between His Majesty’s Government and the United States Government, there should bo a discussion of the world economic problems in which the two Governments are mutually interested. The object of the discussions wul be to promote the revival of world trade and prosperity. While a settlement of w r ar debts is an essential condition of such revival, we have always recognised that there are a number . of other factors, economic as well as financial, which will also have to be dealt with, and we shall he glad to exchange view's with the United States Government on the who.e field.

It was suggested at the time that Mr MacDonald himself should go on a purely informal mission to Washington to see Mr Roosevelt as soon as ho became President, for it was realised that the difficulties in the way of a satisfactory working agreement between the two countries were most formidable, and that a complete deadlock might result if formal negotiations were opened immediately. There have been conversations in London, where. Mr 'No;man Davis has been representing President Roosevelt, while Sir Ronald Lindsay, British Ambassador in Washington, may be assumed to have been busy there since his return in February after having attended meetings of the War Debts Committee of the British Cabinet. Apparently the outcome of those conversations has not been reassuring to Britain, despite the unconfirmed ‘Daily Mail’ report of the “scalingdown ” offer by Mr Norman Davis on behalf of his President.

Mr Ramsay MacDonald is essentially a peacemaker. He has personally contributed much to the repression of resort to arms in a Europe which appears ready to flare up on the slightest pretext. In this instance his task is to bring an end to economic war, for that is the world’s trouble to-day. It is a tremendous task, some might say a hopeless one. But there seem to bo certain new factors operating in his favour. He already enjoys a wide popularity in-the United States. He went there in 1929 to confer with President Hoover (the result being the 1930 Naval Agreement), and during his tour there he addressed many public gatherings with such discretion that an acute observer declared that ho made not a slip of any kind- Moreover, President Eooseveit now declares that Mr MacDonald is an old friend of his whose personal help he would appreciate m the task of “ repairing the broken world,” as an American journalist phrases it. Already President Roosevelt has performed certain administrative acts which tend to pave the way for meeting Mr MacDonald on different ground from the difficult and circumscribed area which past American policy has dictated as the meeting place. Ho has notified Congress of the opening of negotiations with other countries for trade reciprocity, following this up with the announcement of definite tariff reductions on specified .imported articles. Moreover, there are indications of a tariff truce between Canada and the United States. Again, he has just taken measures to attack hoarding, whether of gold by the Federal Reserve or hoarding of tho domestic kind. The bearing of this on the subject raider discussion may not np-

pear plain at first sight, hut it will bo remembered that there have recently been bank failures in the United States, and a crisis of that kind is calculated to start a fresh epidemic of currency hoarding which would exert a lowering influence- on commodity prices. Instead of the precarious condition of their own internal finances making the Americans more ready to co-operate with other countries in reflationary measures as to prices, it has operated in the opposite direction by making them feel so poor themselves as to bo quite averse to letting their debtors oft payment in full. Corroboration of the view that the inauguration of the Roosevelt regime is of good omen is afforded by the chairman of a big shipping company trading between England and America. At the Cunard Company’s meeting Sir Percy Bates said that President Roosevelt’s speeches afforded firmer ground for the belief that the worst of America’s depression had passed, and he looked forward with greater confidence than at any other time during the last two years to a general recovery in world affairs. ,

Mr MacDonald, then, goes to America chiefly to create an atmosphere that will greatly facilitate the discussion of war debts from a fairly common standpoint. That accomplished the discussion of cognate questions will follow naturally and more easily, and that in turn should justify the convening of a World Economic Conference, because the two groat Powers which have made the preliminary moves towards the holding of such a conference will already be working in co-operation, and Mr MacDonald may already be termed the chairmandesignate of the World Conference. Advocating the personal contact between the two statesmen just announced, the London ‘ Times ’ wrote on February 14:

Is there any reason why he (Air AlacDonald) should not at once pay a short visit to President Roosevelt —not in any sense to negotiate a debt settlement, or even to make a beginning of it, but simply to try to arrive at some mutual understanding on tho true relation of the debt to the whole great problem of world depression which confronts both their peoples alike? So prompt a visit would be something more than a conspicuous act of courtesy. It might well prevent divergence from degenerating into deadlock and set the picture from the outset in its true perspective on a larger canvas.