MONROEISM AND ARMAMENTS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 49, 27 February 1937, Page 8

MONROEISM AND ARMAMENTS

A problem connected with international lending in Europe is how to separate it from armament expenditure. It is a truism to say that loans for the economic rehabilitation of Germany would be forthcoming if armament expenditure slopped; but the Nazi re-armament ceases not. Americans who dismir-s the mailer as being part and parcel of "the hates of Europe," and incurable, have lately had their attention drawn to a not dissimilar position existing in the lands covered by the Monroe Doctrine. "Nineteen of the twenty Latin-American republics spend annually well over 170.000,000 dollars for military purposes." "At the same time South American countries owe the United States people at least one and a half billion dollars in bonds and similar obligations of which, it is stated, 40 per cent, is in complete default and another 40 per cent, is

"serviced only in part." Evidently, international hates that build up armaments and .handicap international lending are not confined to Europe. Pacifists both in England and on the Continent regret that Britain has "joined the armaments race," but South American States knoAV lhat America is in it too. Mr. Roosevelt's last Budget message proposed to spend on national defence 980,000.000 dollars, "the greatest peace-time expenditure in American history."