HYTHE, CONFERENCE OF, a meeting (May 15 to 17 between the British and French prime ministers, together with the chancellor of the exchequer and the French minister of finance, in preparation for the Conference of Spa (see SPA, CONFERENCE OF). A French proposal that France should be granted priority in reparation payments seems to have been put forward but not pressed, and the linking up of the reparation problem with the question of Inter-Allied debts was proposed publicly for the first time in the official communiqué.