AMERICA AND GREAT WAR

Northern Advocate, 8 January 1936, Page 5

AMERICA AND GREAT WAR

FINANCING OF THE ALLIES INVESTIGATED (Received 10 a.m.) WASHINGTON, January 6. The Munitions Investigation Committee of the Senate, which has extended the scope of its inquiry to the causes of American participation in the Great War, will start exhaustive hearing tomorrow into the wartime activities of J. P. Morgan and Company. Messrs Morgan, T. S. Lament and other partners and their advisdrs, are jn Washington for direct questioning; which probably will require several weeks. In anticipation of the course the inquiry probably will take, the firm issued a public statement today defending its financial relations with the British, French, and other Allied Governments, prior to America’s intervention m 1917.

It explains Its position as fiscal, and, later, as purchasing agent for these Powers,' and says that, of about 7 billion dollars of financing undertaken, less than 1 billion consisted of unsecured loans. The statement adds that the company will contest any statement from the committee that America’s entry into the war was due to the financial obligations of the Allies to this country. It insisted that the firm had followed the Wilsonian thesis that the nation went to war to protect her human rights, rather than her property rights.