DEBT LIQUIDATION

Northern Advocate, 9 July 1925, Page 5

DEBT LIQUIDATION

MUST precede borrowing

COMPLEX SITUATION. FRENCH FISCAL DILEMMA. (Received 11 a.m.) LONDON, July 8. The "Times' " Washington correspondent says that "debt settlement must precede any loan" will t?e America's reply to the. French proposal to float a large reconstruction loan in the United States. "No surprise is felt," he adds, "that France should desire such a loan. It has long been foreseen that the only way of emergence from difficulties under which the French Government is struggling would be recourse to foreign, and notably American, aid, but it is emphasised that only such settlement of the French debt as would clearly prove French goodwill and such balancing of the Budget as would demonstrate the French people's determination to shoulder the burden could rehabilitate French credits sufficiently to permit an appeal to American investors. In other words, where France might argue that only after the loan; was granted could debt settlement be reached, the American attitude would be insistence that the loan should not be. the but the third in a series of adjustments indicated.' 3 \ —Times.