LOAN AND BRETTON WOODS RATIFIED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 300, 20 December 1945, Page 4

LOAN AND BRETTON WOODS RATIFIED

l 'pHE United Kingdom has now fully ratified the principles of the Bretton Woods plan for a world monetary fund and world bank and also acceptance of the American loan to Britain. The vote in the House of Lords, in the end, resolved itself into a small section of anti-Government Peers walking into the “Noes” lobby, but no alternative to the admittedly hard bargain was offered. In reality the only alternative would lead to grim economic rivalry between Britain and the United States at a time when the world needs international co-operation. Interest in the loan, and in the implications of the Bretton Woods plan, now shifts back again to Washington, to the United States Congress, where it will be interesting to study American reactions- to the helping hand United States financiers have planned to extend to Britain. While it is fairly safe to predict that Congress will ratify the loan agreement, it is likely that some voices will be raised against it, because there are still certain forces within the United States which believe in outright American “go-get-ism” prevailing, that America can stand on her own without giving. There is also a marked opposition in many quarters of the United States to Imperial preference as fostered by Britain and the Dominions. It was fear that Imperial preference would disappear as a result of the American loan, and under the Bretton Woods plan, that actuated opposition to both in Britain. Yet, it may be found that in some quarters of the United States, there is a fear that America is being too generous to Britain and therefore inspiring Imperial preference. These, perhaps, will be as undercurrents only to the main stream of economic appreciation on both sides of the Atlantic, but there is growing evidence that if trade barriers are to come down, they must be brought down as readily by the British Commonwealth of Nations as by any nation, or group of nations, in the world. Mr. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, underlines that opinion by saying that some form of sovereignty must be sacrified (presumably by Empire countries). We can hardly overlook the logic of that, because, if we are to have world government can we at the same time have British Commonwealth government in the sense that the component countries of the Empire are all-sufficient unto themselves, without full international recognition of whatever World Federation the makers and securers of peace envisage?