THE QUESTION FOR AMERICAN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 23 December 1922, Page 4

THE QUESTION FOR AMERICAN

GREAT BRITAIN owes the United States • nearly four billion dollars, and the man in-the street moans to see that it is paid hapk somehow; but how ! writes Major General Sir George Aston in the New York Outlook. There is no use in talking about paying a debt of four billion dollars in gold. Thdre is no gold, when sums like that are involved. How, then, can the debt be paid? We are told by the experts that it could he paid by goods, by sending a lot. of manufactured or partly-manufactured articles over to America for nothing. But this would be very bad for America, be-

cause umuuploy tnenf would increase there. It would lie very good for Britain, because employment' would go up. Britain might* pay by "invisible exports' -in other words, by services rendered. Cor instance, the British taxpayer e oultl subsidise tlie British merchant service to carry goods about the , world for nothing for American shippers. How would that work? American steam tonnage has increased enormously, by nearly 11.000,000, since 1914. Presumably it is desired to keep these vessels running. It is fairly obvious , that ‘services rendered,'' in the way*of cheap freights offered by British shipping. is not likely to-be.an abeeptable method for Great Britain to discharge her debt to America. We seem to be drifting into an economic morass. For , flic experts there may be some solution in vipw of the difficulty. Let us hope that they will find one. The man in the'street, cannot grasp the complications of international economics; he finds it easier to argue from the individual to the mass. It he wants to draw his money from y bank where it is lodged, lie is accustomed to- being asked, “Itotv will you have it?" John But) is at present in the position of a hanker, with ii debt to Jonathan, and it seems to the ordinary man in (heal Britain to he high time In ask a similar' queittioii 'of Ins creditor, whom he litis every intention of pitying, if only hi; could lie informed of any acceptable method of (Kivment.”