Introduction to Prosperity?

Great issue before the world today is whether present political quarrels and economic tensions are to end in another Great War. As Victim No. 1 of the last War, small Belgium has a great stake in maintaining Peace. Last week Citizen Paul van Zeeland of Belgium made a report on the world economic situation that claimed the attention of the world's Presidents. Dictators, Premiers and their ablest political and economic experts.

Statesmen know that when Paul van Zeeland was Premier of Belgium he proved, as Newspundit Walter Lippmann wrote last week, "to be perhaps the most efficient, the least confused and the most sure-footed of the statesmen who dealt with the Depression." Last spring Belgium's young and vigorous King Leopold III used his great popularity in England and France, his many contacts with London and Paris leaders--both Government and Opposition--to get Paul van Zeeland officially commissioned by the United Kingdom and the French Republic to make "an inquiry into the possibility of obtaining a general reduction of quotas and other obstacles to international trade."

Big 6 Best Five. The most important aspect of the 15,000-word report made by van Zeeland last week, was not its inclusion of much good advice that economists have given for years and statesmen have failed to take.

This advice is, of course, to: 1) lower tariff walls; 2) abolish quota restrictions; 3) stabilize currencies; 4) restore freedom of exchanges; 5) balance budgets. Having dropped in at the White House and made the rounds of Europe, M. van Zeeland picked five nations as the Great Powers most apt to take what he considers the standard brands of good advice.

The most desirable first step toward Prosperity, he reported, is "to bring together as soon as possible ... in ... a pact of economic collaboration . . . the principal economic powers . . . France, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Germany and Italy." Not excluding the Soviet Union or Japan or China, but obviously alive to many practical difficulties, M. van Zeeland would simply make a pact "embracing the largest possible number of states, and in any case open to all."

Work would begin by negotiating a series of mutual pledges by which states would "bind themselves to abstain from a certain number of practices contrary to the interests of the community of participants" and further "bind themselves one toward the other to take up and to examine in a spirit of understanding and mutual assistance the problems and difficulties arising in their economic relations."

Tape-Cutting. Statesman van Zeeland knows that every effort thus far to secure international economic collaboration has bogged down in a quagmire of "preliminary negotiation," "'fact finding" and "research by official experts." Therefore last week he emphasized that "on most of the points . . . prolonged studies have been undertaken," and therefore "plans for putting them into effect could be quickly drawn up with the assistance of specialized organs such as the Economic and Financial Committees of the League of Nations, the Bank for International Settlements, the International Chamber of Commerce, the International Institute of Agriculture, et cetera."

His Report explicitly did not attempt to hand the world a ready-cooked Five-Year-Plan on a silver platter. Instead, it called for a few good cooks--not too many to spoil the broth--reminded them that they already possess good cookbooks, exhorted them to put aside quarrels or fears and begin to cook.

Politics Second. An equally significant van Zeeland idea was that the economic difficulties now strangling world trade must be tackled first, before attempting to solve political problems, that when the economic problems have been solved political problems will largely disappear. As a statesman-diplomat, Paul van Zeeland could not call every spade a shovel, but between the lines of his report it could clearly be read that he believed to revive Prosperity in Germany is very nearly the best way to insure that the Nazi war machine does not start out in the direction of Belgium, France and Britain. This "friendly" attitude toward Germans in a man who has been Premier of War-ravaged Belgium and whose Cabinet was overthrown by Rexist (Belgian "Nazi") machinations was news. Toward Italy his attitude was similar. And, Citizen of the World van Zeeland was ready to go on ultimately to help every country including the Soviet Union.

Free Money, Free Men! Heavily emphasized was the Report's insistence that trade must be free if men are to be free--that men lose their freedom precisely in those places where trade has lost its freedom: jailed money, jailed men.

This led Paul van Zeeland to the boldest passages in his Report, those which dispassionately examine and end by dispassionately blasting "autarchy"--the self-sufficiency in national economy which Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini are leaders in applying.

"Such a regime," wrote Paul van Zeeland, "involves--as its definition almost implies--an increase in the real cost of living, that is to say, a lowering of the standard of life of the population concerned. International economic life is founded on exchanges, which only start or continue if two parties find them to their advantage. Artificially to interrupt these currents is to deprive the country concerned of that advantage. More effort must be made in order to achieve the same result, or, rather, the result will probably be less, whatever may be the effort. In several old countries with dense populations it is even doubtful whether under autarchy the present population could continue to live, to whatsoever level of existence it might resign itself.

Opti-Pessimist. "At one moment, seeing the obstacles piling up, I asked myself whether it were not preferable to give up attempting at the present moment any major effort of collaboration in the sphere of international economics, and to await a serener atmosphere," wrote Pessimist van Zeeland.

"If we consider the political plane, reasons to hope for a rapid and cordial rapprochement appear slighter than at any moment since 1918." The very depth of this pessimism he made the chief grounds of optimism: The blackness of the storm now brewing, the appallingness of the wars already waging, should be enough to convince every realistic statesman that now is a time when international collaboration is an absolute necessity.

Reactions to van Zeeland. U. S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, for all his lifetime advocacy of Free Trade and every kind of Peaceful Collaboration, last week kept mum on the van Zeeland Report. The most talented weaseler in England (since the death of Lord Balfour) did speak out in the person of Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon, long "The Empire's Highest Priced Lawyer."

Keynoted Sir John: "The decisions dealt with in van Zeeland's report are for the future, and necessarily depend on the attitude of other Governments as well as our own. ... I want to express the thanks of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom to this distinguished Belgian public man for his willingness to undertake this difficult task, and for the diligence and skill with which he has discharged it."

It thus remained for Messrs. Roosevelt, Hitler. Chautemps, Mussolini, Chamberlain, Stalin, Hirohito, Chiang (all of whom last week kept their fingers crossed) to decide whether or not this major effort at international collaboration lives or dies at birth.

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