The Dawes Plan

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIV, Issue 277, 3 November 1924, Page 7

The Dawes Plan

FRENCH RATEPAYER TROUBLED. WHY HELP GERMANY? A schoolmaster of Lille, France, in a letter to a confrere in Hastings, has some interesting observations to offer on recent developments in the European situation, and especially the scheme for stabilising Germany devised by the Commission under the presidency of Genera} Dawes. “B seems, an you say,” he writes, “that Ramsay MacDonald is behaving himself better ns Premier than in the Opposition; what is greatly troubling us in France is that we know him to be in a minority in the electorates-and that he may disappear any day. That is the worst of democratic institutions: the absence of continuity in foreign, policy. We suffer from it. A PARADOX. “The Dawes plan has been the order of the .day for months, and the taxpayer is anxiously asking himself- why 800 millions of gold marks are being placed at the disposal of the Germans, i and why it is undertaken to maintain ; the German currency at a par with gold, when the franc is worth about one-quarter of its value in gold. There is something paradoxical in that. The great attack planned against the franc! in February last showed us that Gey- I man finance, with its ramifications and alliances in tendon and New York, could do. Is it not providing them with arms to attack us anew? FRENCH PEOPLE ANXIOUS. “The French pliblic is very much< more anxious ftbout the present situation, and Very much less enthusiastic about the MacDonald-Herriot projects than the newspapers state. We have suffered so much at the hands of the Boches before, during, and since the war, that I know few people who would subscribe a halfpenny towards the Dawes loans. The Government will perhaps force the banks to subscribe to it; but the banks will only be putting the knife to, their throats, and they will keep their German title deeds their coffers; the public having r.o . confidence in the Bocne pledges- Tn fine, the future is always full of large pictures, but for us the -official embraces between Premiers are received with a friendly but profound scepticism. INSOLUBLE FINANCIAL PROBLEMS. “We find ourselves in an Inextricable [ financial situation; at each conference > the German debt towards us diminishes and is reduced, while bv the game* of i unpaid interest, the debts of France towards America and Great Britain have become tremendous, greatly ex- ' ceeding what the Boches will ever pay us. The milliards expended to pa v for reconstruction and that which will i yet have to be expended, will fall on t tho shoulders of the already-crushed taxpayer. They are speaking of a levy on capital; that reminds me of the beggar who turned his jacket Inside out. because there were holes in it. In short, a private individual who had a financial situation similar to ours would have only two alternatives to choose between: either to put the kev under the door and escape to a good distance leaving his creditors to divide the ruins of his fortune, or to commit suicide. A nation can do, neither. And this is wfiat is called victory and Peace of Right and Justice! ! The average Frenchman does not understand it in the least! ! !”