RAPACIOUS DEMANDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 72, 21 September 1940, Page 12

RAPACIOUS DEMANDS

GERMANY ON FRANCE

PAYMENTS UNDER THE ARMISTICE

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 19. The French official journal of September 14 publishes a law authorising the opening of a special account for the maintenance and cost of the German army of occupation. The German Government fixed this figure at 20,000,000 reichsmarks a day. This is the figure which, under the terms of the armistice, France is to pay, irrespective of any demands by Italy or of v/hat reparations Hitler may con-! sider imposing at the peace treaty, i Thus Germany is asking 7,300,000,000 reicbsmarks a year from France. In this connection it is recalled in a statement issued by the Foreign Office that under the "Paris decisions" of January, 1921, reparations were fixed at 2,000,000,000 marks. Actually the total paid by Germany amounted to 1,700,000,000 marks. While the sums now demanded by Germany and those she herself was J asked to pay in reparations cannot very fruitfully be compared because of the change in the real value of the mark, it is yet clear that, leaving re- j quisitioning and payments in kind out | !of the question, it can be reckoned i that France, a territory with about ' one-thirtieth of the paying power of Germany after the war, has to pay a sum three times the actual maximum annuity ever fixed under the Dawes Plan. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) LONDON, September 20. The "Daily Express" correspondent on the French-Spanish frontier says the Germans have collected more than £1,000,000 in fines imposed on the impoverished municipalities of western France for attempts to impede the German army. Brest has paid' £100,000, Bordeaux £90,000, and Pai'is nearly £200,000.