The Washington Week-end The most significant feature of M. Laval's
brief visit to Washington is the almost universal satisfaction of the French Press that nothing came of it. France has a perpetual fear of being jockeyed into something she does not want to do. She did not want the Hoover mora- torium of last July and she does not want an extension of it next July. M. Laval seems to have won on that point. Germany is to be told that if she cannot resume payments when the moratorium is over (and everyone knows there is no possibility of her doing that) she must set in motion the ordinary machinery provided under the Young Plan, with which, it may be observed, the United States has no direct concern. M. Laval, moreover, having failed to get any pledge from Mr. Hoover regarding security in the French military sense, it was natural enough that Mr. Hoover should have failed to get any pledge from M. Laval regarding disarmament. That leaves, on the visible and tangible side, only an under- standing as to the maintenance of the gold standard by both countries in co-operation, and, as by-product of the visit, Mr. Borah's pointed observations on treaty revision. These, as it happened, *synchronised with, though they were certainly not prompted by, Signor Mussolini's very similar declarations on the same subject.
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