EXPIRING AGREEMENTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 140, 15 June 1936, Page 8

EXPIRING AGREEMENTS

London, a nerve centre for excited Europe and for an Empire whose trade relations are in flux, is surely a busy place. International crises must not be allowed to overshadow the fact that within a month Britain's agreements with Argentina and with Denmark expire, the former on July 7 and the latter on June 20. ( What is to happen then is a question vitally affecting the Dominions as well as those foreign countries, and the question will be taken up again with London by the same Australian Government as handled it before, but by a new New Zealand Government. The debt of Argentina to Great Britain is at least £500,000,000 sterling, and Britain's problem is to give Argentina sterling exchange to pay the interest (after paying for Argentina's imports) without depriving meat-exporting Dominions of the same privilege of paying for their imports and interest—and also (the Dominions" claim) expanding their exports. Correlate all these oversea factors (foreign and British) with the factor of the British farmer, and .you have one cause of Mr. EllioL's headaches. Turn from meat to dairying, and the same problem has to be restated in terms of (he Danish agreement expiring on June 20. of Mr. Nash's guaranteed prices, and of Australia's butter claims. If is staled in London that, to allow brealhing time, the Anglo-Danish agreement may be extended for six inoullis,