DEBTS OF LAST WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 122, 25 May 1945, Page 5

DEBTS OF LAST WAR

CANCELLATION URGED WASHINGTON, May 24. Senator Edwin C. Johnson (Democrat, Colorado), giving evidence before the Senate Finance Committee on a Bill to repeal the Act which prohibits loans to foreign countries in default on debts incurred during and after the Great War, said that the United States should cancel all debts from the Great War, totalling 11,000,000,000 dollars, and give the world a clean slate for future financing. He added: "We cannot collect them, anyway." Mr. William Clayton, Assistant Secretary of State, said that the defaulters cannot and will not pay for a great deal of the reconstruction necessary in Europe and the United States is the only country able to furnish the tools and the1 technology. It will also be necessary to find markets abroad to maintain anything like full employment in the United States. "The goods we can export are badly needed," he said. "Many countries at present under the ban imposed because of default of their Governments will have to float large loans to reconstruct their railways, bridges, etc. It is most important to us that these countries should restore their economies as quickly as possible, not from any humanitarian standpoint, but from a purely commercial point of view. "Whatever money is lent by the United .States will, in turn, be spent within the United States.- Tariff barriers after the Great War made it impossible for the other nations to pay us." Finland was the only country continuing to meet payments on its war debts when the present war began.