Professor Haberler was surprised at the extent of the devaluation and also at its coming despite Sir Stafford Cripps' assurances that it would not "But at least we can now be fairly sure that there will not be any further devaluation in the near future," Professor Haberler says.

As for the move's chances of success, Professor Haberler agrees with Professor Williams that Britain's internal welfare program should be less lavish and that her sterling war debt should be repaid less liberally. He also thinks this country sooner or later will have to allow its export volume to drop. "Otherwise we must resign ourselves to subsidizing the world forever."

Harris Not So Sure

Despite the optimistic views of his colleagues, something of a minority view was voiced by Seymour e. Harris '20, professor or Economics and head of the undergraduate International Trade course. "Britain will still have a substantial deficit in 1952," he predicted, "largely because the American market won't take much more British goods." Professor Harris says the British deficit is so large that "even if the United States were to double its purchases of British goods, it still would not cover a large part of the deficit."

What intensifies this particular difficulty, Professor Harris believes, is that devaluation in other countries will cut Britain's chances of increasing sales outside of the United States in the Latin American and sterling area markets. "Consequently I'm not overly enthusiastic about devaluation, because there is so much else that must be done.

While most of the University's experts were concerned with the effect of devaluation upon Great Britain and Western Europe, two in the Harvard family were nothing the impact of the British action upon Soviet Russia.

A Look at the Iron Curtain

Wassily W. Leontief, professor of Economics on the executice committee of the Russian Research Center, had two observations to make:

In one sense the soviet countries cannot affect devaluation because the volume of East-West trade is now low for obvious political reasons. "If England wanted to sell to Russia, devaluation would prove a big help; but as long as trade is so small it does not matter."

And Professor Leontief warned against the train of thought that devaluation will greatly add to the economic strength of the West and that consequently there should be little to fear. "Russia may be rubbing her hands right now in hopes the British worker will have to cut his tandard of living by such degrees that Communism will easily be able to take over Britain."

The chairman of the Russian research Center's economic project. Associate Professor Alexander Gerschenkrop agrees that because of the trade barriers, devaluation's overall effect on the Soviet East will be "small for the time being." But he remarked that, although Russia theoretically has been always trying to wreck the Marshall Plan, in practice she has continuously been exporting grain to western Europe, and buying some production goods in return. "Perhaps in economic policy, Russia is not so interested in discouraging western trade as we suppose."