Non-payment of War Debts

Maoriland Worker, Volume 12, Issue 295, 25 October 1922, Page 4

Non-payment of War Debts

A cable message says that France will be unable to pay - either interest | or principal on her war debts for four J -years. Four years is a long time, and it is possible that when .it has elapsed the French memory will have contrived to have forgotten all about the debt. Frankly this would cause The Maoriland Worker no disturbance, because, as is now generally recognised, .while the debt is met. the peoples will be condemned to stark .impoverishment and trade will be semi-paralysed. The point we wisli to make, however, is this: that if -France, free to trade (in the sense that no blockade has padlocked lier activities , ), as she has been,, and with comparatively no unemployment • (being largely agricultural) cannot meet her liabilities, is there, not some excuse for Russia in refusing" to pay her war debt, blockaded as she has been, raided by a score of military adventurers, and reduced by civil war and luatine to rags and misery? Yet the same France as has paid nothing and can pay nothing to England and America is the most ruthless of Shylocks with respect to Russia, from wJdom she wants every sou and that at ence. International morality Is a queer business. When one nation (comparatively prosperous) cannot pay It is due to the exigencies of the financial situation. When another (pillaged of its substance) cannot (and therefore will not) pay it is due to a blasphemy against morals, crime almost against the Holy Ghost. "A mad , world, my roasters!"