WAR DEBTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 133, 7 June 1932, Page 7

WAR DEBTS.

MUST BE SETTLED.

WORLD'S NIGHTMARE. Ministers' Frank Discussion Of Current Problems. PENDING CONFERENCES. (British Official Wireless.) (Received 12 noon.) RUGBY, June 0. Arrangements for the Lausanne Conference, due to open next week, will engage the close attention of the Prime Minister, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, during the next lew days. Other Ministers will also be devoting increased attention to the work of the Disarmament Conference at Geneva, and the Lausanne and Ottawa Coniercnees.

Meanwhile the reports of the Governments whose views have been sought regarding the proposed World Economic Conference are awaited. Some days will probably elapse before any further advance can be made in regard to it.

References to the work of some of the approaching conferences were made during the week-end in speeches by Mr. J. H, Thomas, Dominions Secretary, and Viscount Hailsham, Minister of War.

Mr. Thomas said that no country was so fundamentally, financially sound as Britain, and no nation was better prepared or more ready to give a real lead in the ultimate restoration of world prosperity. Confidence must be restored, and their first job was to get rid for all time of the war debts and reparations that were hanging like a nightmare over the world.

Regarding Ottawa, he expressed the hope that they would succeed in laying the foundations for permanent machinery that would enable all members of the Empire to contribute to a solution of their common problem. Blind Folly of Tariff Walla. Fresh tariff barters would not solve the world problems. War debts, reparations and suspensions were all contributing to the difficulties, but so was the blind, mad folly of each nation building tariff walls one against the other. Britain changed her fiscal policy, not because she wanted high tariff walls, but because she was going to uee the tariff not as a menace to the rest of the world, but a.s a lever to reduce the tariffs of the world. In regard to disarmament Viscount Hailsham said that Britain had already set an example by reducing its armed forces to a mere fraction of what they were before the war, and the Army had become little more than an Imperial police force. MUST NOT FADE. BRITAIN AND ARMS PARLEY. LONDON, June 2. There is hope that, within 10 days, vital developments in connection with the Disarmament Conference will affect the entire international situation, including reparatione and war debts, said a British Foreign Oflice spokesman to "The Sun."

He declared emphatically that Great Britain would not let the Disarmament Conference fade. This authority indicated that important consultations had occurred between various capitals during the recent recess of the Geneva Disarmament Conference. He declined to state the nature of the expected developments, beyond indicating that neither the French plan nor a revision of the Versaillee Treat}" was involved. He expected that the new French Government would be established within a week, and immediately after that the nations would be ready to face the real facts of the world c 'sis.

He suggested that disarmament would overshadow even war debts. The recent gloomy forebodings about the Geneva Conference might prove premature. He even scanned the possible repercussions of Dr. Bruening's resignation.

This attitude comes as a complete surprise, especially as the newspapers without exception have lately considered that the Disarmament Conference wae on its death bed, and even expressed the opinion that the fate of the Lausanne Conference was in the balance. Great Britain, however, has always insisted that the outcome of Lausanne is bound up with disarmament.