Evening star., 1932-06-26
NATIONAL POLICIES DELAY
WORLD PARLEYS' SUCCESS
Ever-Increasing Number of Gatherings
Bear Constant Relation to Economic
and Political Decline i'm Europe.

been agreed upon in any International
conference. The result OF this step,
however, was to end payment, and that
after all, was the important thing. But
because he got ahead or public opin-
ion Mr.. Hoover was assailed by the
politicians.
Postwar history is the record Of poll
ticianS and peoples catching up with
the facts. The politicians. despite the
legend Of leadership, only follow the
people. The business Of a politician is
to live, and the price of living is to sat-
isfy his constituents. This is why, al
though you have many prominent citi-
zens in the various countries urging the
scrapping of reparations and the can
ceiling of debts, you find practically no
officeholders, whether presidents or
prime ministers, advocating such poll
cies.
Place for Alibis.
An international conference Is today
a place where national politicians seek
and frequently obtain-a domestic
alibi for their failure to solve their
national problems. The German,
French, British and American govern
ments represented at these meetings
supply each other with excuses to carry
home ard present to their publicS.
~-N-N@A %A<AS%o SAAS ANoRO4AoADAAAly QDOn an
other. The German serves as the
scapegoat for France, the Frenchman
for Germany. The American can blame
all Europe and all Europe can agree
in condemning America.
The method is excessively danger
GUS when conditions are politically as
explosive and economically and fnan-
cially as precarious as they are In Ger
many and, In fact, in all of Central
Europe today. But these risks have
to be taken because there is nothing
else possible. In international con-
ferences national delegates and their
governments behind them are tied hand
and foot by the state Of mind prevail
ing in their respective countries at the
moment
The best example Of all of this Is
supplied by the reparations history. At
Paris in 1919 the liability of Germany
was fixed at $33, 900, 100000. which
would have involved an annual payment
for two generations of above $1,000
100000. Any public man who at that
date questioned German capacity to
pay would have been roughly thrown
out of Office BY 1880 at The Hague
the Young plan had reduced the an
nual payments to $500, 1000, 600. At
Lausanne the other day there was COM
mon agreement that for the present, at
least, Germany could pay nothing and
tacit recognition she never would pay
any more.
Thus it was only after Is years that
it was possible to deal realistically with
reparations. The allied publics had to
be shown" The education had to
be accomplished By what is known gen.
orally as the process of trial and
error" but in my New Hampshire viii
{ lQOn fC or arNinfasracnrra1wv lr~orsfI.nl
/ the method Of by gosh and by CORY" {"
One OF the greatest mistakes Of today
Is the conviction that the statesmen
and politicians are fixed and immovable
in their positions, that they are re-
Sponsible for the failure of tnterna-
tional conferences to produce results.
On the contrary, the smallest expert
ence at these gatherings serves to eStab-
lSh the fact that the larger number
of delegates have no personal convic-
tionS. AS a matter of fact they see
themselves caught between a state Of
facts which they recognize and a state
of mind which dominates the electorate
they represent. When their constitu-
ents think internationally they will act
internationally, but not before.
Power of the Facts.
But facts are more powerful than
national convictions in the end. The
late Roland Boyden, who represented
the United States in reparations ques-
tionS, once summed up the whole
money problem, debts and reparations
alike, in the statement: You can't get
more than you can get" Europe has
discovered Germany can't pay, America
is learning Europe won't pay. Mean
time, while the process of education
continues, there have to be confer
ences to give the impression Of gov
ernmental activity. Moreover. the con-
ferenceS do serve the useful purpose
of demonstrating that nothing can be
done.
An economic and financial confer
epce with debts and reparations left
out is, of course, mere nonsense. But
a conference on these questions while
public opinion remains what it still Is
in all countries concerned is a nonsense
anyway. The World War disclosed the
fact, not even dimly perceived before,
that economically and financially, in
dustrially and commercially the affairs
of the various peoples on this planet had
become hopeleSsly intermingled. But
the postwar years have disclosed that
in the face of this revelation the various
peoples have still continued TO think
nationally.
And since the peoples continue to con-
troll their national policies, their states
men and politicians have no choice but
TO follow the popular lead. Every time
an international conference fails, how
ever. and the record is unbroken, fresh
evidence is supplied of the impossibilIty
of solving international problems by
purely national means. So another
generation, looking back upon the con-
temporary period, may well conclude
method devised not to promote inter
national agreement but rather to serve
as a sort Of kindergarten school to edu-
cate national publics about world af-
fairs.
(Copyright, 1932)