The Loan That Nobody Loves
IF anybody wants to know all the arguments against the Washing- ton Loan Agreements, including one or two brand new ones, Mr. Amery provides them. Those who would also like to hear the arguments in favour, or even to be told that such arguments exist, should apply elsewhere: - Mr. Amery is not interested in their re- quirements. For him American commercial , policy is determined by " tough guys " driven on by " the intoxication of the belief that it is their mission to dominate the world's economy "3 the inter- national trade and employment proposals to which the British Government are committed are " this precious effusion " - Britain's chief negotiator in the loan discussions was " poor Lord Keynes " ; and free trade is " unregulated promiscuous trade." All- this might be forgiven in a good cause if Mr. Amery's sole purpose were to state forcibly the pretty general view that the conditions imposed by the American authorities as part of the price of the loan are harsh and unconscionable. But his net is thrown wider than that. He has exercised great ingenuity to imply that it is impossible to agree with his statement of the trouble withoui also accepting his remedies. Shortly stated, those remedies are the abandonment of the present loan proposals, an open door to American commercial capital seeking employment in the British Empire, a strengthening of the sterling area and a good stiff dose of Imperial Preference.
Now it is possible to oppose the conditions attached to the loan without jumping to these opposite extremes. It is also possible to suspect that, on Mr. Amery's own assumption of powerful, ignorant and predatory American exporting interests, not one of his defensive devices stands any chance of sheltering the British Empire and the sterling area from the admittedly dangerous repercussions of an uncontrolled boom and slump in the United States. To permit the setting up of an unlimited number of American-controlled factories and enterprises on British soil hardly seems a good way to insulate this country from the effects of American financial and commercial irresponsibility. To admit the big bad wolf on the ground-floor is surely a less safe proceeding than to keep him on his own side of the moat until he learns better manners. Again, the sterling area is only an association of mutual convenience between countries which are individually open to any onslaught of buccaneer- ing American exporters. If dependence on free American capital is a house of straw, the sterling area is a house of sticks at best. Nor is Imperial Preference the house of bricks providing safe shelter for the little British pig. It has a big hole in it, due to the fact that the Dominions, and Canada and Australia in particular, are more interested in Anglo-American co-operation than its opposite.
The fact is that, if the picture of American intentions and Ameri- can ineptitude is as black as Mr. Amery paints it, then nothing can save us except a determined attempt to convert American business- men and public servants alike to a saner frame of mind. This will not be achieved by retiring behind inadequate defences and shout- ing defiance. Still less will it be done by distracting public attention from the issues on. which British opinion is united (oppoSition to the terms of the loan and support for genuine Anglo-Arnericair co-
operation) and those issues on which it is deeply divided (Mr. Amery's remedies). To this extent Mr. Amery's dialectical fury blows in the wrong direction. But to the extent that it must first be demonstrated that there is a job to do, before anyone will firmly set out to do it, his book will do good. Nobody can read it and gather the impression that all is well with Anglo-American com- mercial arrangements.
WALTER TAPLIN.
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