Foreign News: Hague Haggle

Events at the Hague Conference were in such a desperate snarl last week as Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden continued bickering for a bigger piece in the reparations “sponge cake” (TIME, Aug. 12 et seq.), that progress could best be traced in terms of personages:

Thomas William Lamont. First authoritative word that choleric Chancellor Snowden was losing the support of British financiers came at London from Thomas William Lamont, brisk, decisive, crinkly-eyed partner of J. P. Morgan & Co. Chatting with a correspondent of the New York Herald Tribune—a paper on which he once worked as a reporter—Mr. Lamont said that, although “The City” (financial London) at first strongly backed Chancellor Snowden’s demand for £2,000,000 per annum more sponge cake, there was now lively apprehension lest that same demand should wreck the Conference and prevent adoption of the Young Plan. “They feel,” said Mr. Lamont, allowing himself to be directly quoted, “that failure to reach some agreement would mean international derangement. They feel it would endanger the gold standard [of Sterling] and would threaten British financial losses far greater than £2,000,000 a year—or £2.000.000 a day.'”

Clearly the existence of such a state of mind meant that last week “The City” was putting heavy pressure on the Labor Cabinet of Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald, and through him on Chancellor Snowden. As Mr. Lamont left London to sail on the Olympic for Manhattan, his cheerful air kindled confidence among businessmen that “The City” would yet put things right.

Gustav Stresemann. The Hague Conference was called to put into operation the Young Plan (TIME, June 10) which fixed for the first time the total Germany must pay in Reparations. Neither Chancellor Snowden nor anyone else has made the slightest objections to this basic feature of the Plan. The whole quarrel at The Hague has been among the Creditor Powers, squabbling over how big a slice each could get. Abruptly last week the squabbling delegates were reminded of the basic-issue by Germany’s Foreign Minister, bold, astute Dr. Gustav Stresemann.

In a speech potent and ringing. Dr. Stresemann demanded that that major portion of the Young Plan which fixes what Germany must pay be immediately ratified because: 1) It was approved by all; 2) The date on which the Young Plan was designed to supersede the old Dawes Plan was Sept. 1; 3) All German budgetary arrangements had been made in good faith to pay Reparations on the Young Plan scale which is $132,000,000 less per average year than the Dawes Plan scale; 4) The expert drafters of the Young Plan declared that it represents the utmost practical capacity of Germany to pay; 5) Therefore to expect Germany to go on paying under the Dawes Plan “more than her utmost capacity to pay” would be an intolerable injustice, and Dr. Stresemann declared passionately: “To such an injustice my country cannot submit!”

Queen Wilhelmina. So sunk were the Creditor Powers in the slough of their quarrel that Dr. Stresemann’s protest was utterly ignored. The Conference did not get back on the highroad of common sense until a jolly royal banquet had been tendered to all concerned by sensible, buxom, motherly Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands.

As they drove up to Her Majesty’s palace at The Hague, the delegates saw only a large, immaculate wooden house, with a severe square courtyard opening directly off a public street. The house was full of crisp, sweet-scented Dutch flowers, primly arranged in tall vases. There was drink to match the national taste of every guest: French champagne, German hock. British whisky, Italian lacrima christi, Japanese sake, also water and long black cigars from Dutch Sumatra.

Somehow or other the party became a marked success. There was no formal banquet table, no rigid order of precedence. Queen Wilhelmina had seen to that. She knew that Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden would be outranked as a mere treasury official by the several prime ministers and foreign ministers present—and certainly Mr. Snowden would have been furious had he been seated below Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos of Greece! Therefore the delegates were seated not at one straight table but at ten round ones. Each statesman might fancy that where he sat was the head.

Too much credit should not be given to Her Majesty, but fact was that not many hours after the royal banquet Mr. Snowden, for the first time since the Conference opened, lunched informally with his chief foe, French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, and with Dr. Stresemann. As every U. S. businessman knows, the bigger the deal, the more vital is lunch.

Philip Snowden. Stubbornly battling for 100% fulfillment of his demands, pallid, drawn-faced, crippled Chancellor Snowden rejected, day after day. a long series of Franco-Belgian-Italian verbal offers, all claimed by the Latins to give Britain upwards of 80% satisfaction, all denounced by Mr. Snowden as giving less than 20%—a discrepancy accounted for by the fact that each side insisted on computing at different rates of interest the value of the sums involved over 59 years. “I have had the patience of a Job!” exclaimed the Chancellor to British correspondents. “I told this conference on the first day what Great Britain must have!”

Finally, after Queen Wilhelmina’s banquet, Mr. Snowden asked that the latest verbal offer of the Latins be put in writing. All that afternoon, all night, all the next day, Prime Minister Aristide Briand of France and his Latin colleagues toiled to document their offer, snatching only occasional catnaps, trying desperately to get the job done in time to have a few days’ leeway for final dickering before M. Briand would be obliged to leave for the September session “of the League of Nations at Geneva.

As ultimately presented the Latins’ written offer gave Great Britain an increase of $6,500,000, annually in her share of what the creditor powers receive in reparations. Surprisingly enough the major part of this concession was made not by France but by Italy, a fact the more notable because the Italian chief delegate, Finance Minister Antonio Mosconi, has not had a free hand, but has been forced to keep in hourly telegraphic touch with Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, no softie.

Clearly, Chancellor Snowden, having browbeaten a 60% concession to his demandsout of foes who included Il Duce, could concede 40% and still return to London in triumph. For half a day Patient-as-a-Job Snowden pondered the Latin offer, then rejected it with the comment “not yet adequate.” Worn to a frazzle, sleepless and mad clear through, M. Briand and Signer Mosconi were undoubtedly in a mood to let the conference crack up then and there, but a few more days for dickering at The Hague were left, and the dire alternative remained of adjourning to a later date and leaving Germany unfairly saddled with the Dawes Plan after Sept. 1, 1929.