Evening star., 1934-02-25
OPEN TRADE DIPLOMACY
URGED AS PEACE STEP
Elimination of Secrecy in Foreign Deal.
ings and National Monetary Au-
thority Declared Demand.

feOerd1 RESERVE 6OdTo ana dCCuIIiO-
lating them all-plus some new ones
into the hands Of a national monetary
authority which will control and
direct all American currency and
credit and finance from one head
quarters in Washington.
The present division of powers and
responsibilities in this matter is in
tolerable. Mr.. Goldsborough, who has
been an extremely able prophet Of
monetary events in this country, is
moving toward putting an end to that
division. So is the Committee for the
Nation" which for the last IA months
has prophesied the monetary policies
of the administration with astounding
accuracy. Mr. Goldsborough's bill,
supported by the Committee for the
thentic indication of the port toward
which our ship Of state is steering.
Other Nations in Lead.
When we get there, we shall find
most of the other nations of the world
there before US, The general rule in
every country is coming to be that
either by law or by tradition and
practice it shall have q unified and
potential belligerent trade authority
and unified and belligerent none
tary authority.
This monetary authority will be
able to manipulate the gold content
OF its currency-as We have manipu-
lated it already-for the purpose of
capturing foreign trade from foreign
commercial rival countries. 1t will
be able to raise and lower discount
rates, to expand and contract credit,
to move the price level up and to
move 1t down, and in general to
arrange and re-arrange our monetary
situation in the light of the neces-
stiles OF the struggle of all countries
in the international monetary ex-
changes and thereupon in the inter-
national commodity markets.
The man with a desire for inter-
national goodwill and peace may
well shudder when he contemplates
the emergence of a world in which
each country-or, at any rate, each
powerful country-is competently
equipped with trade bureaucrats and
monetary bureaucrats who out of
their own heads can day by day
and night by night involve their
populations and the total world in
continuous commercial attacks,
counter-attacks. forays, sorties
f1ank-movements. frontal thrusts,
captures of prisoners, slHrenders of
positions, victories, defeats.
Such world would be farther from
assured peace than the world that
produced the great outbreak in 1914
President Wilson sought to prevent
similar outbreak in the future
through the introduction of open
covenants openly arrived at" in the
field Of ordinary political diplomacy;
and in that field his efforts, though
at first derided. have had an almost
excessive success. Today the worlds
Secretaries OF State and Foreign
Ministers hasten-almost too pro-
fusely-to tell the world not only
about their treaties but even about
the details OF their negotiations.
ImpenetrabIe Secrecy.
Meanwhile, nevertheless, the
worlds trade authorities and none
tary authorities remain for the most
part encased in secrecy which is
impenetrable. If a political foreigner
like James Ramsey Macdonald, prime
minister of Great Britain, comes here,
his conversations with our President
are extremely amply conveyed to the
public. If, however, monetary
foreigner like Montagu Norman, gov
the Rank of ENGLAND
here, his conversations with the gov
ernor of our Federal Reserve Board
result only in the issuance of
statement, orally, to the effect that
Mr.. Norman came to this country to
see an old lady to whom he is de-
voted in a little town in Maine. He
merely incidentally dropped by Wash
ington on his way from Maine to
Halifax.
Surely the electorate of every free
country should say two things.
One. We admit that large con-
centration of power nowadays into
national trade authority and a ma
tional monetary authority is necessary.
Two. We therefore stringently de-
mand that each such a hority shall
hold hearings, shall listen to argu-
ments, shall announce and discuss
policies, shall permit public debates
and discussions, before it embarks
upon measures which may put the
world into tumult and battle. We de-
mand that there shall be as much
publicity for our international bread
and-butter agencies as there already
is for our State Departments.
We already have precedent in this
direction in the constitution of our
present Tariff Commission. Our
Tariff Commission is the only one in
the world before which any inhabitant
Of the world, native or foreign, has the
legal right to appear in order to argue
regarding a proposed tariff change.
Our Tariff Commission is the only
trade authority in the world which
requires publicity before action. That
Is a method tending toward goodwill
and peace And it is that method
that we should be commencing to the
world instead of merely joining the
worlds general promiscuous COM
mercial war.