WAR DEBTS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 17 March 1928, Page 11

WAR DEBTS

rPHE now famous letter of Frederick W. Peabodv to President Coolidge was adjudged the most devastating criticism 'which had yet appeared from anv American source regarding the policy of the United States on British and Allied war debt repayments. Now conies a more devastating one, in the form of evidence volunteered to aid Air Peabody in his campaign for a revision of the whole question of war debts. In a recent letter to the New York “Times,” Air Peabody said: ‘ Wo have heard much about what our Allies owe us, blit who has said anything about what we owe them?” An answer to the query come from an active colonel of the United States regular army. Ho says: “I feel -sure that you did express the sentiments of countless Americans to whom the dishonour of America is a personal dishonour, and who resent the actions of those who are placing us in the category of the Shylock. Aon ask very rightly what we owe our Allies. ' To this question 1 reply -by submitting from memory a few figures and data of what might justly be considered our debts to our Allies as follows: Total time in war, April 6th, 1917, to November 11th, 1918, 19 months 5 days. “While we were represented m the fighting prior to September 12th,. 1918, in several engagements, by units in size from a regiment to a- division, we did not take a man’s part in the fighting until September 12th, 1918, when we, with Allied assistance, took the St. Atiehael Salient. “It therefore seems that we do ourselves full justice when we say we did a man’s share of the fighting for the last -three months of the Avar. For the sake of easy computation, however, let us say we took a full part in the fighting one-sixth of the full period of nineteen months five days, which is quite a bit more than we can justly claim. “T-heu for one-sixth of the war period our losses were approximately: Killed 50.000, wounded 210,000. Placing a value of 50,000 dollars on each young man we lost, our life cost expressed in money was two and a halt •billions of dollars. “According to a report of the Ate-di-cai Department, U.S. Army, the cost to

AMERICA TO THE ALLIES

the Government of those wounded during the same period of our activity was, up to June 30th, 1925, just- -over three -billions of dollars. So -the total cost of killed and wounded was five -billion and a half dollars, disregarding the continuing cost of the wounded. “Since the enemy was on the run during the greater part of the period ot our active participation in the fighting, it is fair to assume -that our losses per month w-cre less than they would have -been the first- five-sixths of the time and before the enemy had broken. To be conservative, however, let us assume that tfyev would have been the same. Then our losses, in' men killed, would have been -three hundred -thousand, and, in wounded, a million -two hundred thousand —or, expressed in money, thirty-three billions of dollars. The saving to us due to our Allies doing our fighting for five-sixths of our war time is therefore twenty-seven and a half billions of dollars.

“How. doesn’t, it appear to you, as it does to me, to be a monstrous thing to demand the Teturn of the advances made for our own benefit to our Allies with more than a hundred per cent, additional we call interest, and to ignore our monumental obligation to them, for which they ask nothing?

•“For obvious reasons the name of my army correspondent cannot be disclosed, but I may give you the name of another army officer, in calling your attention to - what he thinks about these alleged debts. In a speech at Denver in August, 1924, Commander-in-Chief. of ■the American armies in France said: ‘What was the situation in 1917? We had no plan, no preparation, no artillery, no transportation, no ships; in fact, nothing. “ ‘lf it bad not been that the Allies were able to hold the lines for fifteen months after we had entered the war, hold them with the support of loans we made, the war might well have been ’lost. We scarcely realise what those loans meant to them and to us. . . . “ ‘We were responsible. We gave the money knowing it would be used to hold the Bocbe until we could prepare. Fifteen months! Think of it! We sent our first men in June and they were not ready to go into the front lines until the‘following year.’ ”