"Roosevelt Money"

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was first swaddled, Japan's present Finance Minister was already approaching middle age. Today a tottering but keen-witted patriarch, Mr. Korekiyo Takahashi was the first statesman of world prominence to seize last week on President Roosevelt's devaluation project as a basis for local action.

Calling in Tokyo correspondents, Mr. Takahashi revealed that his Finance Ministry was rushing into shape a bill to make ''Roosevelt money" out of the yen--i.e. to devalue it and presumably pounce on the profit to be had by seizing gold held by Japanese citizens and banks.

"If America returns to the gold standard with the gold content of the dollar reduced, as seems likely," Mr. Takahashi said, "Japan probably will be compelled thereafter to devalue the yen similarly in order to resume gold payments. Preparations for such an eventuality will be necessary to strengthen the nation's gold reserves."

Same day in Canada, where seizure of private property is repugnant to every Methodist fibre of rich and pious Premier Richard Bedford Bennett, the project of reducing the gold content of the Canadian dollar--without confiscation--became an active issue in the Dominion Press. Usually well posted, Toronto's Globe said that Premier Bennett was expected shortly to ask Parliament to devalue the Canadian dollar 33 1/3%.

"The adoption by statute of such a lower gold content of the Canadian dollar would," said the Globe, "undoubtedly have widespread reaction. It would in due time reduce by one-third the burden of all indebtedness payable in Canadian currency, and would tend to increase prices of commodities in the domestic trade of Canada in similar proportion."

In South Africa wild rumors that "Roosevelt will buy unlimited foreign gold," caused a near riot on Johannesburg 'Change as frantic brokers bid up "kaffirs" (mining shares) to dizzy highs on orders from London and towns all over South Africa.

Meanwhile Argentina, which pegged her peso to the French franc when sterling went off gold, pegged back to sterling last week as South Americans awaited a "devaluation race" between the dollar and the pound. Stormed bellicose Baron Beaver-brook's Daily Express in London: "The revalued dollar demands an answer and the British answer should be a revalued pound. A great world currency war has been begun by President Roosevelt and he will fight America's trade battle with -L-400,000,000 of conscripted gold."

In the eyes of French editors, long used to Marxian proposals for a capital levy or seizure of prosperous people's wealth, President Roosevelt's devaluation move seemed precisely that. They concluded that his 40% to 50% devaluation of the dollars in every U. S. citizen's pocket will so cheapen the U. S. national debt that in "real money" it will be less under President Roosevelt this year than it was under President Hoover.

Officially the French Government remained more than ever determined last week to keep the franc on the gold standard at full present value, but ominous rumblings were heard among France's allies. Decidedly slick was a move proposed in Belgium and favorably discussed among members of the Chamber. While the dollar is cheap and the belga is dear, proposed Deputy Marquet, let the Government borrow enough belgas to pay off Belgian debts in the U. S. at the present attractive discount. Later, if the belga is devalued, the Belgian Government will merely find it that much easier to repay the people from whom it borrowed.

From Czechoslovakia, another ally of France, came strong rumors that perpetual President Masaryk and perpetual Foreign Minister Benes were about ready to devalue their crown.

In Germany, where Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels tries to make all news-organs play the same tune "like a great organ of many pipes," Organist Goebbels seemed unable to make up his mind about Roosevelt money, permitted a divergence of expression unprecedented since he sat down at the Fatherland's Press keyboard. Led by the Vossische Zeitung, one section of the German financial Press flayed President Roosevelt for "disturbing the world with a rubber dollar" expanding and contracting between 50-c- and 60-c-. Other equally authoritative papers echoed the Berlin Boersenzeitung's declaration that "President Roosevelt's return to the gold standard would be particularly pleasing from the German point of view."

In Basle, Switzerland officials of the World Bank voiced conviction that the Roosevelt Administration in seizing the world's largest gold hoard would set a "bad example" to politicians of other countries.

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