regard it as a catastrophe amounting to a world tragedy,” he cabled from the naval destroyer Indianapolis, which had been escorting his boat “if the greatest conference of nations, called to bring about a real and permanent financial stability . . . allowed itself a purely artificial and temporary expedient. . . .” Condemning the “old fetishes of so-called international bankers . . . ,” he declared that the current plans for stabilization were based on a “specious fallacy.”