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To the Parliamentary Reconstruction Committee last week Deputy Finance Minister Dr. W. C. Clark voiced one of Canada's prime postwar worries. Said he: "Unless Canada can convert British sterling to U.S. dollars, Canada's [postwar] lot will be hard indeed."

Finance Expert Clark was arguing for a firm postwar international agreement on currency. But he was also driving home the point that Canada, more than most countries, must trade to live. In a war boom that has swelled Canada's exports to more than five billion dollars, the hard facts of Canada's prewar trade were forgotten. Then Canada was the best U.S. customer. But she financed her essential U.S. purchases, serviced her American debt by her trade with Britain. Sterling balances in London were converted to U.S. dollars.

World War II made this arrangement impossible, forced President Roosevelt and Prime Minister King to devise the Hyde Park agreement. Under it the U.S. pledged itself to purchase sufficient Canadian raw materials, place enough U.S. contracts in Canada, to balance Canada's purchases in the U.S. This scheme has worked so favorably that Canada is now able to repay the U.S. in her own dollars for U.S.-built extensions to the Northwest airway to Alaska (TIME, March 13).

This is the result of war business only. Clearly Canadians would like to carry over the same arrangement to postwar trade.

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