NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 83, 31 December 1924, Page 8

NOTES OF THE DAY

By this time it must be clear to the British Government that the project of convening an Imperial Conference solely or mainly to consider the Geneva Protocol is impracticable. Expressions of opinion in the various Dominions all go to show that if the Conference assembled, the Protocol would be decisively rejected. The mere proposal to hold a Conference seems, in fact, to have accomplished in this respect all that could have been accomplished by an actual meeting of the Imperial.representatives. Unless the British Government is able to throw some entirely new light on the situation it is clear that the idea' of holding a Conference early next year must- go by the board.

A proposal by the French Minister of Finance that intcr-Allied war debts should be pooled and divided between the participant nations pro rata, according to their national wealth, comes rather belatedly. Britain three years ago proposed a mutual cancellation of these debts by which she would have made much heavier sacrifices than any other nation. Within the last week or two, her Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that she still desires to collect only so much in reparations and in repayment of the sums due from her Allies as wifi between them balance the amounts she is paying to the United States. Britain, that is to say, is making far greater concessions than she could be asked to make under any pooling arrangement. If on the publication of the Balfour Note. France and the other European Allies had taken up the British offer., combined representations might have been made which possibly might have induced the American Government to adopt some other policy in the matter of intcr-Allied debts than that of collecting all it can lay its hands upon. To speak of a pooling arrangement while America maintains her present attitude . is, of course, merely to beat the air. Evidently, however, Britain has gone to an extreme limit in making concessions, and if further concessions are wanted by. France it is from the United States that they must be sought. M. Clcmcntel’s intimation that France cannot abate the total of reparations against Germany unless she receives a quid pro quo settlement of her war debts is rather in the nature of a blank charge. Under the Dawes settlement, to which France is a party, the reparation payments to be made by Germany during the next five years are fixed, and the greatest of these annual payments would hardly represent interest and sinking fund on one-third of the former reparations total. Any increase in Germany’s annual payment is to be in accordance with a prosperity index. In these circumstances, a refusal by France to abate the total claim against Germany would be of only nominal significance.