Evening star., 1932-04-03
Belgium's New Financial King
omDi

| if you bother me shall put them or
and 60"
Nobody bothered him. He was
needed.
During the last international confer
ence also he was needed. For instance
last July in London at the famous Of
! ficial meeting convened by Prime Min
lister Macdonald to discuss the financial
situation in Germany. The scene was
related to me by one of the rare cabi-
net ministers in power in Europe, who
has not vet lost all sense of humor.
After a speech from the chairman
Mr.. MacDonald-a speech which might
have impressed a religious audience
more than some 20 skeptical politicians
after a brilliant answer from Laval
after a gloomy and serious answer from
Bruening and after a few more or less
formal contributions from other dele
gates, deadly silence had fallen on
the assembly. Almost everybody felt
the difficulty of submitting something
practical 1t was at this point that the
chairman turned TO the massive figure
of Francqui. who always reminds me,
with his cold but vigorous expression
of some italian Condottiere of the fif-
teenth century. and asked:
Has not our distinguished Belgian
colleague something to suggeSt?"
The Belgian answered that he had
not. But Mr.. Macdonald knew better
and insisted And the only practical
proposals which came cut of the cele-
brated London meeting were offered by
Francqui to his distressed colleagues
and adopted by them eagerly.
Mr.. Macdonald knew that it was
worth while to insist with Francqui
because he knew one essential point
about the Belgian financier-that while
French and German economists are
sorely or mainly thinking of immediate
French or German interests, Francqul
is organically unable to think only in a
Belgian, or French, or German way
He never forgetS for a moment-a true
representative of free-trader Belgium
that the present crisis, terrible as it is
Is only momentary cross-section OF
the major crises which have grown
up since the war and out of mediocre
peace.
When the Hoover plan for the sus-
pension of war payments for one year
was announced, Francqui was the first
to proclaim in Europe that it was a
mere breathing space, and that it was
urgent for Europe to act and decide
before the end of the Hoover armistice
His Conscience at Rest.
FrancQui is almost unique in Europe
in being able to say that his conscience
Is at rest. He proposed first to the
board Of the Bank for international
Settlements in Basel and later to the
commission created in Geneva for the
preliminary studies concerning the Eu-
ropean Union a plan for reviewing the
export trade movement of goods which
before the war flowed in the same di-
rection as the capital of Western Eu-
rope, which went to the Near East and
to certain overseas countries. The
capital consisted of loans, the produce
of which served to develop new coun-
tries economically in such a manner as
to increase the buying capacity of the
populations, and thus to provoke a per-
manent demand for manufactured
goods.
This system no longer functions
Francqui proposes to reinstate it under
another form adapted to the present
circumstances, which would have the
same beneficent results.
There are at present in several coun-
tries of Europe institutions of a type
analogous to the Belgian ''Societe Ma
tionale de Credit fIndustrie," the OBJ
Ject OF which Is to discount paper al
three, four, five and six years, drawn
by industrials on clients who, by the
nature of their enterprises, used me-
dunn or long-term credits, such as rail-
way or electrical companies.
In order to enable these national
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