"VICIOUS" REVELATIONS

Publishing the names of the banks to which the Reconstruction Finance Corporation extended aid has been characterized as a "vicious action" by Senator Atlee Pomerene, erstwhile mentor of the relief organization. He argues that the publication was in the nature of an unwise and unnecessary sop to public curiosity, and might have succeeded in undoing all the good that the loans had achieved. The unequivocal anger of his remarks indicates that he had operated under the misapprehension that no transactions were to be divulged, and that he views the public statement in the nature of a personal betrayal.

Senator Pomerene does not err in fearing a loss of smooth operative efficiency with the Corporation records available to all. He might once have been correct in regretting the unfounded, distrust of the beneficiary banks which would obtain among certain portions of the people. But no pure consideration of expediency, however strong, should invalidate the very real right of the public to accurate knowledge of the financial functions of its government. The Reconstruction Finance Corporation has no prerogative to the secrecy which has been denied the Interstate Commerce Commission or the Federal Reserve Board. Although it is futile to talk of imminent dictatorships, so palpable a breach of public confidence as privacy in this matter would have entailed is certainly incongruous with a republican sanction. And there were, moreover, many details in the report which proved illuminating to the political observer, such as the staggering loans made to a Corporation member's bank on the day after his resignation.

As to the undesirable results which Mr. Pomerene predicts will attend the publication, the sobering effects of the bank holiday and its concomitant fiscal reorganization should act as a balancing factor. The last week has made it clear that there were certainly few banks in the United States which could not easily have used government loans. And there is no reason to believe that the actual beneficiary banks were any weaker than their competitors, but merely that they may have been more influential. Such is not the stuff of which panics are made. Perhaps more significant, however, than the actual publication of lists of banks and figures is the quick anger of Senator Pomerene and the light it throws upon his philosophy of government.