Institute of Politics

Up to drowsy, Berkshire-cradled Williamstown, Mass., there climbs panting, every Summer, a special train freighted with potent financiers, learned professors, bustling lesser statesmen and inevitable news gatherers. They are greeted by beaming President Harry A. Garfield of Williams College. For the space of a lunar month they constitute The Institute of Politics. Last week President Garfield opened the proceedings of the Institute as chairman for the sixth time, benevolently urged 300 delegates assembled for discussion to discuss. Present and discursive were: Paul Harvey, onetime editor of the one-time International Interpreter, who popped a revisional proposal for the Dawes Plan; Sir Frederick Whyte, onetime president of the Indian Legislative Assembly, who ridiculed "the menace of Asia" to the Occident; Far Eastern expert and publicist Henry K. Norton; two statesmen who may be termed the "lions" of the present session: Dr. Albert E. Zimmermann, successful fiscal rehabilitator of Austria-Hungary (TIME, July 12, INTERNATIONAL), and onetime Greek Foreign Minister Nicholas Politis--and many another. With addresses by the "lions" reserved to embellish a climax other delegates pronounced pithful remarks last week, which reverberated educationally. Paul Harvey revealed officially for the first time that the International Chamber of Commerce evolved, with collaboration of experts of the Dawes Plan committee, a scheme of revision for the entire Plan designed to facilitate reparations transfers. Just as the Dawes plan was protested at first but accepted as a working proposal," said Mr. Harvey, "so will this plan be accepted. . . . The public will not be consulted about putting it into action." The Dawes Revisions Scheme, as outlined, proposes the payment of German reparations in "producers goods," such as mining machinery, which it is proposed to install, for example, in French Morocco, thereby giving employment to French workers. Should Germany pay in "consumers goods", shoes for example, numerous French shoemakers would be thrown out of work. The cost of financing concerns to operate the "producers goods" and return a profit is expected to be borne by loans from the U. S. and allied nations. Sir Frederick Whyte: "It is very doubtful whether the united armies of Asia could ever be set in motion. Such an enterprise implies a unity of purpose of which there is no sign, and therefore, to add up the millions of China and India and then multiply them by the power of Japan, is the arithmetic of bedlam."