ABSTRACT
In mid-August 1933 Lindsay gloomily anticipated that within four months ‘the instalment of God knows how many millions falls due and the question has to be dealt with once again’. Although he believed American public opinion had progressed ‘very considerably on the road to realism’, it had not yet reached the point at which cancellation could be contemplated, no final settlement was in sight and Congress would soon begin to turn its mind to the mid-term elections in November 1934.1 Against that unpromising background, it was announced that Leith-Ross would visit Washington in October to commence preliminary conversations on a war debt settlement. Sir Frederick Leith-Ross was the ideal candidate for the assignment. As a member of the Reparations Commission between 1920 and 1925, he had acquired an extraordinarily high level of expertise in international finance and inter-governmental debt which he put to good use when appointed as the government’s Chief Economic Adviser in 1932. At Lausanne and throughout the debt discussions with the United States he was acknowledged to be ‘the leading figure’ among the officials. According to Lindsay, during his discussions in Washington in April and early May 1933, Leith-Ross also demonstrated ‘the proper mixture of friendliness, forthcomingness, and firmness, and all this, combined with his great abilities, has won him a good will in all the important circles here which will be invaluable if ever H.M.G. want to use him again in the same way’.2 As a former Deputy Cabinet Secretary later encapsulated the general view, his ‘transcendent ability impresses everyone’.3
