A HARVARD ENVOY TO LONDON

The appointment of Professor Williams as one of two American experts to help in the preparation of the agenda for the World Economic and Monetary Conference which is to meet in London early next year is a high personal tribute to Professor Williams and indirectly, a mark of respect for the Harvard Economics Department. The position of American delegates to the preliminary meeting of experts is one of unusual honor and of unusual responsibility.

What the Economic Conference will accomplish will, of course, depend very much on international political conditions and on conditions in the domestic politics of the various governments. Even if the conference should have no decisive issue in governmental action, it can scarcely fail to have value as an educative force, acting directly on the statesmen at the conference and indirectly on the electorates of the world. In organizing a World Economic Conference the nations are at least using a reasonable method. In seeking the opinions of experts they are admitting that knowledge and reason are the only safe guides in matters of such tremendous complexity as international finance.

The calling of University economists as advisers to the world's political leaders, like the calling of university historians and students of government to the Paris Peace Conference, ought to remind the public of the falsity of the opinion that university professors lead unfruitful lives in monastic aloofness to the pressing affairs of the world.