The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1944-03-06
TODAY and TOMORROW
By WALTER LIPPMANN -

BY WAITE
Soon there will begin negotia
tons with Great Britain and 9th
er countries on economic matters
which are certail O, the utr~ Isl
importance to American prospect
ty, and in all likelihood to TIE
peace of the world. They will have
to do with shipping. civil aviation,
Recommendations, raw mater
ials, markets, foreign investment,
currency. The right decisions can
bring us to an era Of solid pros
perity. The wrong ones will sure
~ bring us to another 1929, to ca.
tastrophic depression in the cap
italist countries. with all the revo-
lutionary consequences this would
mean.
Although much expert and pen
etrating work of preparation has
been done on many of the ques-
tons that have to be dealt with,
this country is not now, I believe,
able to know whether it is max
ing the right decis 'ons. We lack
the means by which we can judge
whether any particular policy is
sound The Administration does
not have the means Of judging, the
Congress does not, business men
do not, the general public does
not.
We. can see the root of the thing
if we realize that every one of the
plans calls for the sale of Arneri-
can goods or services to foreign
81. Obviously. every American
company and bank which hopes to
DO business abroad expects even
tually to be paid in the only coin
which is real money in the Unit
ed States that is to say, in
American dollars. To beapaid in
pounds sterling, French francs,
Russian rubles, would not be a
payment to an American unless
he went to England. France or
Russia to live.
Now virtually every plan for
promoting American interests
abroad - for the merchant ma
rine, for civil aviation, for OBJ
tanning concessions of oil and 9TH
er raw materials, for opening up
markets for our manufa cturers
and our farmers - is a plan for
selling exceedingly valuable Am
erican things tc foreigners. But
unless these plans contain a plan
by which the Americans, who
sweat to make these valuable
things can be paid for them in
American dollars, they cannot be
sound plans. Either the Americans
wiz not be paid for their work and
will be giving it away, or the for
eio RS will not buy, because
they cannot pay for what we Of
fer to sell them.
This is the elementary principle
that you cannot sell to a custo-
mer if he hasn't the money to
pay his bills. Everyone unde--
stands it is matter of course
when he. is doing business inside
the country. But we have never
fully grasped the fact that this
same principle applies to foreign
business. The most probable ex-
for Our ignoring this
elementary principle in the eco
nomic disaster which followed the
last war, and for continuing to
ignore it now, is that until about
twenty-five years ago what was
called the gold standard, but was
in fact the worldwide dominance
of the London money and com
modify market, regulated our in
ternational trade for us. Though
we now have to regulate it our
selves, we have not yet learned
how.
So it is as yet nobody's bust
ness in this country to advise us,
guide us, and control us so that
our foreign transactions as
whole remain solvent. In respect
to our foreign business we are
like a pilot who would take off
for distant country in an air.
plane which had no gauge to
measure the amount of gas in
his tanks. Our position is as if
Congress still had nothing but ap-
committees, and there
was no bureau of the budget to
tell Congress how the total ap-