Empire

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 4, 30 October 1931, Page 7

Empire

CANCELLING OF WAR DEBTS When Lord Bledisloe, addressing the Wellington Conference of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, said, “Unless the world is to become bankrupt and self-respecting nations reduced to a condition of economic serfdom threatening the world’s future peace, international war debts are bound to be materially reduced or wiped out altogether,” he was only affirming what is rapidly becoming a universal opinion. America, as the only creditor nation, is naturally reluctant to agree to anything in the nature of cancellation, but President Hoover practically admits the present moratorium will have to be extended, and Senator Borah, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Federal Senate, stated in connection with the visit of the French Prime Minister to America to settle financial questions between the two countries, that if the Allies cancelled reparation payments from Germany he would favour the cancellation by the United States of the war debts owed by the allies. This has all along been the offer of Britain, which has cancelled all its own Allied debts, and the necessity of this, not as a measure of generosity but of plain business common sense, is becoming evident to everyone. To believe that the next two generations will be content to allow a millstone of debt to hang round their necks to pay for the folly of their fathers is to believe the incredible.