BRITAIN TO MAKE CONCESSIONS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIII, Issue 199, 8 August 1923, Page 4

BRITAIN TO MAKE CONCESSIONS.

It is a long time now since it was suggested here that, in the end, the problem of German reparations would be solved by Britain being called upon to make, and making, some substantial concession with regard to her own share in them. The time has come when this suggestion has been put forward elsewhere, though in slightly different form, but with like effect, the proposal being that such sacrifice as is to be made among the Allies should be volunteered by Great Britain. Strangely enough, the message we received yesterday on the subject comes from America. There, as we know, there has been a decided insistence upon the full recognition and liquidation of the British war-debt to the United States, with, as yet, no intimation that America means to forgo any part of the debts owing to her by her Continental “Associates” in the Great War. But it is a New York cable that forecasts a meeting between Lord Curzon and M. Poincare, the French Primo Minister, “to discuss a formula under which the amount of reparations should be settled by concessions from Britain in relation to inter-Allied debts.” What ground the New York journal that is quoted has for making this statement we are not told, but, having in. mind past history, both old and recent, the prediction has every appearance of being fairly well founded. In this connection it is interesting to note what was said by one participator in the press discussion which, when our last mail left London, was going on over a letter that Mr. Lloyd George had sent to the “Times,” and in which he sought to relieve himself from the accusation of being the one chiefly responsible for imposing impossible terms on Germany. In this discussion the right of the Allies to include the cost of war pensions in their reparation claims was strongly questioned as being at variance with the conditions of the Armistice upon which Germany virtually surrendered. The “Times” itself seems to accept this contention, for it says that “it was Mr. Lloyd George who. at the Paris Peace insisted, against the terms of the Armistice, on the inclusion of pensions in the bill to be presented to Germany.” One of the correspondents puts the case more forcibly when he says that “our claims to the inclusion of pensions ... arc clearly inconsistent with the agreed terms on which Germany laid down arms in November, 1918. Not only this, but, in the ultimate analysis, they were macle not so much at the expense of Germany as at the expense of France. As the total jsum to be demanded from Germany under the Treaty of Versailles was clearly beyond the capacity of Germany to pay v tKe effect of the inclusion of pensions was to deprive France of that to which she had an absolute and paramount right —complete compensation for the destruction in Northern France.” Every penny, this correspondent argues, that may be paid by Germany to Britain on account of pensions is ultimately not a charge on Germany, but a deduction from the full reparation which Germany, with Britain’s assent, had originally promised France. “There is only one way by which this controversy can be settled honestly,” he concludes. “Go back to the agreement of 1918. insist that Germany shall pay in full that to which she then agreed, and cancel all the later unwarranted accretions to which the whole difficulty is due.” It is to be noted that Mr. Lloyd George seems, inferentially at any rate, to admit that the inclusion of the pensions claim was outside the terms of the Armistice. He defends it on the ground that “it was a just claim and the only w’ay in which the British Empire could secure anything in respect of the gigantic burdens it had borne.” Incidentally, he asks, “w'hat will the Dominions say to the proposal to abandon the claim?” The Dominions by this time have probably forgotten that they are to share in whatever little may be recovered.