Fiscal Rehabilitation

A lean, tall Dutchman and a U. S. citizen not very lean or very tall have been engaged for three and one-half and two years respectively in rehabilitating the fiscal administrations) of Austria and Hungary. Both men have borne the title: High Commissioner of the League of Nations. Both have administered huge, League-floated loans to such good effect that the budgets of Austria and Hungary balance and their currencies are stable.

Since the League of Nations has recently terminated the regimes of both High Commissioners (TIME, June 21 and July 5), and accorded to each warm, pulse-tingling laudation, the names of Mynheer Alfred Zimmermann and Mr. Jeremiah Smith have loomed afresh in capitals.

Mr. Smith. Boston lawyer Smith, lauded and feted a fortnight ago by effusively grateful Hungarians (TIME, July 5) made the retort courteous and gallant last week by returning to the Hungarian Government a cheque for $100,000 which was tendered him as his well-earned salary for two years of unremittent labor. Premier Count Stephen Bethlen of Hungary declared himself unable to find words in which to praise fitly such generosity from a man known to be far from rich. Straightway the cheque was deposited as "The Jeremiah Smith Hungarian Scholarship Fund." Every year two Hungarian students will travel memorially to the U. S. for twelve months' study.

At Washington, U. S. income tax officials expressed some doubt as to whether Mr. Smith's $100,000 cheque does or does not constitute "taxable income" upon which he must pay the Treasury's piper, when he returns shortly to the U. S.

Mynheer Zimmermann. Bald, suave, aristocratic, just, fluent master of five languages, for 15 years able Burgomaster of Rotterdam Dr. Zimmermann spoke with not unseemly pride of his achievements to newsgatherers last week: "I came to a country in financial chaos. The task which I undertook was an entirely new one, without precedent in history. . . . It was not an easy task.

"Reconstruction was influenced on one side by internal politics and on the other side by foreign politics. Neither Austria nor the League could justly expect 100 per cent satisfaction.

"Yet I can enumerate positive results, . . . the entire [Austrian] fiscal policy is again based on solid foundations; the League's loan to Austria is considered everywhere as one of the safest investments in Europe, especially because it is covered in pledged revenues and securities more than four times its value.

"Personally, I leave Austria full of gratitude for the able co-operation I have received, not only in Austria itself, but abroad and especially in the U. S.

Significance. Dr. Zimmermann's restrained allusion to the almost insuperable political difficulties which beset him in Austria does him credit. It was his thankless task to discharge 100,000 superfluous Government employes, as rapacious a band of entrenched bureaucrats as were ever left over from an overturned monarchial regime. Naturally, Dr. Zimmermann has remained, since that heroic and salutary pruning action, one of the best hated men in Austria; a symbol to the unstable and irresponsible factions in the Austrian Parliament of all that is abhorrent to scheming politicians. That the good Doctor's staunch inflexible Dutch honesty and obstinacy have won out over so much intrigue smacks of a latter day miracle.

As everyone knows, Mr. Smith's task, though sufficiently arduous, was greatly facilitated by the fact that he had relatively few intriguing politicians to deal with. He received consistent co-operation from the virtually dictatorial regime of Regent Admiral Horthy and Premier Bethlen whose Ministry is today the oldest in Europe. (Formed June 17, 1922.)