Evening star., 1933-05-06
nr, Soong and DR.. Schacht.

Bv coincidence, of course, and not py
design, those two countries, which, east
and west. can be called the WorloS
principal trouble spots, today take tnelr
nIaces in the mosaic of conference that
president Roosevelt is piecing together
at Washington. China sends to wash
inpton her cultured, Harvard-breo
Young minister of finance, DR.. L. v.
Soong. while from Germany comes Dr.
Hialmar Schacht, president OF the
Reichsbank at Berlin. To these authorl-
tative spokesmen OF their respective
countries the Government and people
of the United States accord welcome
no less hearty than the one alreaoy
extended to the foreign emissaries VINO
have lately been here on the same
rissioN-to commune with the Amer
lean authorities on ways and means 70
stabilize and improve world economies.
Hereinbefore China and Germany
are referred to as trouble spots and the
areas where conditions prevail easily
capable of intensifying international
unrest. While it is the policy OF Presl-
dent Roosevelt and his advisers to con-
fine discussions with the foreign states
men now passing through washington
as far as possible to considerations that
enter into the program of the London
Conference, it will be difficult. in the
case of either China or Germany, to
limit conversation to mere matters OF
tariffs, currency, exchange and trade.
Our purely business and financial rela-
tions with both countries are important
ard extensive. No other nation has
anything approximating Americas stake
in Germany, represented by $780, 000,-
600 of private debts-that is, the funds
which have been invested in various
Reich enterprises, private and semi
public, during the past decade.
But it IS in the menace to world
situations in China and Germany that
the United States Government is pri-
marily interested. 1t has that interest
because world economic restoration
must remain an iridescent dream as
long as world peace is imperiled. Ma
tions will not disarm while that peril
persists, nor can their trade revive and
flourish with any assurance Of that fu-
ture tranquility indispensable to its
development.
China, in the American view, is a
threat to peace through no fault of her
own. She has been turned into a
cockpit, her territory ravaged, her in
ternational treaty rights ignored, by
her powerful neighbor, Japan. China
is the scene, not the cause, Of events
which require the Occidental world to
contemplate the Far East with anxiety
and continuing fears that a conflict
now localized may not always remain
a purely Asiatic affair. DR.. Soong
will not fail to portray Chinas plight
in appealing colors to President Roose-
welt and the American people. He will
90 so in the assurance of a sympathetic
hearing.
DR.. Schacht's primary task will be to
explain Hitlerism. The able economist
statesman, no stranger to these shores,
will learn that, while the United States
has not the remotest right to judge of
the German peoples choice of a system
of government-and makes no pretense
Of doing so-it does have legitimate
concern in the policies of any govern
rlent when those policies impinge upon
International issues. Germany's deter
mination, as exemplified by Chancellor
Hitler and his program, is to amend
the treaty of Versailles. The United
States is not a party to that pact, but
President Roosevelt has proclaimed that
this Government looks upon treaties
and their loyal observance as "the cor
ner stone Of international relations"
At the moment, the section of the
Versailles treaty which Germany is bent
upon revising in her own favor con-
Germs arms equality. With that demand
there is much sympathy in the United
States, and there will continue to be,
unless the Berlin government adopts a
position so intransigent as to threaten
the collapse of the whole Geneva effort
to bring about worldwide reduction of
ornaments.
If DR.. Schacht, modern statesman,
can throw any light on the Nazi policy
of medieval racial and religious perse-
cution, he will crafty large section of
American public opinion which, in
common with opinion throughout the
world, has been shocked by certain
aspects of German official procedure
since Herr Hitler vaulted into power.
Russia, "the bear that walks like a