Dollars for the Colonies
Wherever the responsibility may be adjudged to lie, the break- down of the loan negotiations between the Colonial Development Corporation and the International Bank is singularly unfortunate. President Truman's Fourth Point, on the use of American capital for developing the backward regions of the world, no doubt con- cerns the United States primarily, but the International Bank has an American chairman and its seat in the United States ; the failure, therefore, of the first project for co-operation by the bank in the development of British dependencies 'cannot fail to damp American enthusiasm for a Fourth Point policy. It is argued on the one side that the stipulations for searching inspection of the uses to which a loan is put are complicated and vexatious, on the other that the bank is merely taking normal commercial precautions. There is clearly something in both contentions, particularly perhaps in the argument that since the sum involved is small—five million dollars—and the use to be made of the heavy equipment to be purchased with the dollars can only in part be foreseen, close inspection and supervision might well be onerous. True though that may be, it is not conclusive. An experiment was projected, and it is of the first importance that the experiment should be made. It is necessary to proceed to some extent by trial and error, and the error would not, at the worst, be very disastrous for the Colonial Development Corporation. The bank itself might well find that in practice no elaborate inspection was necessary. The Corporation should try again.
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