Reparations.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19544, 14 February 1929, Page 10

Reparations.

(The task that has been set the Committee of Experts on Reparations who have now held their preliminary meetings in Paris is too big and bewildering tp be realised without a struggle. The elements, however, are these. Germany eoasiders thai the experts have to de-

eide only one question—her own ability to pay. Britain says that Germany's indebtedness should eaneel the interAllied debt to the United States, leaving something over for European reconstruction. France believes that Germany's total indebtedness as fixed by the Peace Treaty, £6,600,000,000, still stands, and must be paid as nearly as possible in the period (30 years from May Ist, 1921) prescribed in the Treaty. Under the Dawes Plan, which modified the clauses in the Treaty, Germany's debt to the Allies amounts to some £125,000,000 annually, a very considerable burden but one which Mr Parker Gilbert, Agent-General for Reparations, says that Germany can continue to meet. The Germans, on the other hand, say that the payments have been kept up largely out of money borrowed from the United States, and that if this inflow decreases, so must her ability to pay so large an annuity. The Germans also deny all connexion between their debts to the Allies and those of the Allies to America, and since it does not seem satisfactory to Washington that America should keep on lending to Germany in order that Germany may pay to the Allies the money that the Allies shall pay to the United States, there may appear to be a hopeless impasse. If Germany can pay only by borrowing, then to insist on her doing so when loans are not readily forthcoming would throw the international exchange into disorder. But as even tlie Manchester Guardian points out, which is very sympathetic to Germany, much of the borrowed money has been productively invested and has given an immense stimulus to the whole of the German economic system- France will also fight hard to maintain her present share of ReparatiQns, and to prove that a reduction would seriously embarrass her regarding her commercial war debts to America. These are only the major points which the Committee of Experts must take into consideration during the next few months. The New ' York Times has hopes that once Gprmany's total debt has beep fixed, it can he " commercialised," when Germany's payments would become largely a question of payments to private investors rather than to Governments, and then (it thinks) " the intimftte connexion "of this German indebtedness with the " whole body of left-over war debts "will be made so clear that no one can tf fail to understand it." The experts will probably consider the possible commercialisation of the debt, a question on which Mr Gilbert has not touched, but in the meantime most people will think with the Manchester Guardian that "the future of Reparations was "never so obscure as it is now."