FOR AND AGAINST

In London, the bankers, the sovereigns of the dollar, the monarchs of credit were given the floor.…

Should we expect, from these autocrats of finance, sonorous and hollow speeches, bombastic periods, sublime flights of fancy? No, of course not... These men are neither tribunes, nor apostles, nor poets. These men are businessmen, and business demands a realism stripped of all dreams. We therefore knew well in advance that the bankers were not going to London, to pluck daisies and sing pious hymns of universal brotherhood…

Let us admit, all the same, that we did not think that they would speak quite as they speak! Let us admit all the same that the dryness of their proposals and the harshness of their demands significantly exceed our expectations...
We knew well that they would behave like businessmen... But we see them behaving only as men of money. There is a nuance...

It is only as men of money that they intend to pose all the problems and that they claim to resolve them. They speak of nothing other than money, their money, our money. We speak to them of world peace, they answer money. We speak to them of the salvation of the world, they answer: money...

And yet there was the war?... Yet there were thousands and thousands of men who fell in defense of the law, the law of all and of humanity, of humanity as a whole... Yet there were ten French departments reduced to dust by the invaders... But no... but no... It seems that all that no longer counts. It seems that there is no longer any trace of all this in the bankers' memory... It seems that there is only one thing that counts, that should count: the check.

These gentlemen, who pose so harshly as men of money, will end up making us doubt their abilities as businessmen. Because true businessmen, if they are obliged never to neglect the question of money, nevertheless have, in the conduct of their affairs, other concerns and other ambitions even than money. They try to have new ideas, bold ideas, to support progress, to carry out reforms, to launch new creations. Because they want to create, because they want to produce, because they want to do action, and not just add up...

The bankers in London, let's be frank, talk small, think small, act small... What great can come out of all these small things?... Are the bankers in London incapable of seeing big, of thinking big?... Then they would be small men... The bankers in London must show us that they can broaden their ideas and their plans... Money, they say... Money...

Yes? Well! What? Money?... Money?... But it is the balance of the world that makes the value of money, of the people's money and of the bankers' money... In the event of a shipwreck, money is nothing and a check, at the bottom of the water, cannot even feed a sardine, let alone a shark...

Maurice PRAX.