GOVERNMENT ACCUSED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26708, 1 March 1948, Page 7

GOVERNMENT ACCUSED

TREATMENT OF DOLLAR RESERVES

“PLAYING LADY BOUNTIFUL” N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent

LONDON, Feb. 26. The Financial Times, in a stronglyworded leading article, accuses the British Government of playing “ Lady Bountiful ” with Britain’s gold and dollar reserves. She has done this first, by permitting a policy of convertibility and non-dis-crimination under the American loan agreement, then of concluding a series of “ loosely drafted ” convertibility and payment agreements which have permitted other countries —“ some of them dollar hungry, others dollar greedy to obtain dollars at Britain’s expense. “For some inscrutable reason,’ says the newspaper, “the Government has evolved the principle that the. gold reserve is not Britain’s property, but the common property of all the countries which contributed to the imperial dollar pool during the war. Handicapped by this self-imposed liability, the British negotiators have had no choice but to refund to all and sundry part of their respective contributions to the common war effort. Nobody, of coruse, would dream of refunding to Britain her immense contribution.” The Financial Times continues that, in spite of its mistakes, the Government appears to regard its bad bargains with unbounded complacency. The probable reasons are that it knows it can depend upon its majority in the House of Commons, and that it feels it can disregard outside criticism because mass public opinion upon these “so-called technical matters” is practically non-existent. As a result, faced by the maximum of pressure by foreign negotiators and very little pressure by Parliament, the Government is under a strong temptation to take the line of least resistance. “ How many intelligent Britons realise, for instance,” concludes the paper, “ that the amount of dollars generously ceded to Egypt would pay for several years’ basic petrol ration? “At present the public, although impatient of austerity in all its forms, implicitly accepts the Government’s statement that dollars are just not there. Until these things are better understood the Government will be under no comoeliing incentive to abandon its quixotic magnanimity to foreign countries.”