Foreign News: London Economic Conference

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Obscured by the Great Powers' problems at the Conference is the fact that the 50-odd smaller powers are not going to London just for the ride. At the beginning of the Conference each will be allowed to make a 15-min. opening address which will embody the principal demands of each country. Running them off with clocklike regularity this would take up four eight-hour days (each address is immediately followed by translation). Veterans of other international assemblies suspect that the opening addresses will occupy at least a fortnight, with the world Press paying little attention. Meanwhile one man has taught the minor powers how to make their voices felt: Eduard Benes, Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia.

He it is who organized the Little Entente bloc of Rumania, Jugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, whose unified foreign policy faces the world so successfully at Geneva that, coming to London as their spokesman, Benes will rank as the representative of a Great Power with Britain, France, the U. S., Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia. There are at least a dozen Latin American countries whose views on foreign trade coincide quite as closely as those of the Little Entente. The Scandinavian countries form another group with Belgium and Holland. Should they form working combines even half as efficient as the Little Entente, and there is much evidence to suggest that they will, not 66 nations large & small but ten great powers will do the World Conference's work.