Gold & Groans

Since statesmen of the Great Powers, led by President Roosevelt, have now succeeded in befuddling not only their publics but also themselves and the world's leading bankers as to the real value of ''money," there was legitimate confusion and alarm last week when England's paper pound slumped in a single day 1 1/2% against bar gold, the only absolute in a now definitely mad monetary world.

Groaned Pundit Walter Lippmann in concert with many another:

"The signs are multiplying that the stage is set for an event of worldwide importance and of unpredictable consequences. . . . It is a tragic prospect, indeed, if the world has reached the point where the three principal nations concerned with the control of the price level and monetary forces -- namely Britain, France, and America--are unable to cooperate and are forced each to go its own way to the disadvantage of all and at the risk of bringing new misery to every one."

In London, where the crack of Doom itself would be heard without visible perturbation in "The City," urbane Britons yawned that this is the season of the year when exports from His Majesty's Kingdom are particularly heavy. Therefore, said they, the pound was being permitted to decline without intervention from the Exchequer as a boost to British trade and a means of offering foreign buyers tempting prices in their own currencies.

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