WAR DEBTS

Evening Star, Issue 19017, 12 August 1925, Page 5

WAR DEBTS

FRANCE'S UNDERTAKING LIMIT OF HER CAPACITY. PrcM Auociation —By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, August 10. M. Caillaux (Minister of Finance), addressing British and American pressmen, said he would undertake to pay to the limit of Franco's capacity, hut he could not assume the responsibility of committing Franco to payments in excess of her capacity. M. Caillaux stated that the Moroccan war up to the present had cost France 200,000,000 francs.—Reuter. BELGIUM’S OBLIGATIONS. WASHINGTON, August 10. With an assurance from the Ambussador, M. do Cartier, tbat Uclgunu • will honor her just obligations, and with a promise by Mr W. A. Mellon (Secretary of the Treasury) that Belgium would he asked to pay only within her capacity, the AmoricanBelgium Debt opened its negotiations for the funding oi Belgium’s 480,000,000c10l war debt to the United States. —Reuter. DEBTS AND TRADE. “If it is time for tho European nations to face the fact of debt, it is time for us to taco the fact of payment,” says tho American magazine 4 New Republic.’ “We can be paid only through an increase oi exports from our debtors, exports which must be taken, if not by us, by other peoples who can pay for them. Wc can receive payment only through an increase of imports, if not Irom our debtors, from other States with which they have trading relations. Any pressure upon our late associates to pay their debts amounts to a pressure upon the whole foreign world to increase its business in exports, and upon us to increase our own business in imports. 11 wc wish the debt paid, wo ought to consider seriously whether we can let the tariff stand at. its present high level.’’ Tho writer says that if maintenance of the present tariff is essential to American industry, Iho only conclusion is that “we nave rigged up so crazy an economic structure that if our debtors were to appear at our ports with all the articles of use and luxury needed to discharge their debt wc should bo compelled to send our navy to repel them. . . . An individual creditor who should scream ‘ Ray! Pay!’ to his debtors, and then set about barring tho door against delivery of the sums duo would, of course, be set down as a preposterous moron. Not to press the analogy too far, we may yet doubt the adequacy of a statecraft that does not see that the debts and foreign trade are two problems that cannot ho handled separately; (hut a policy of actual debt collection implies a vigorous overhauling of tariff schedules.”