WAR DEBT PAYMENTS

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 12, 22 December 1933, Page 7

WAR DEBT PAYMENTS

WHEN America formally gave notice to her European debtors that a further instalment of war debt payments was due on December 15, she could hardly have been hopeful of a ready and favourable reply. The due date brought no pleasant surprise. Out of ten nations

one only, Finland, paid what she owed. Two, Britain and Italy, made what is known as “token’’ payments. That is, they paid a small part of what was due. The other seven nations France, Poland, Belgium, Rumania, Austria, Hungary, and Estonia defaulted altogether. For the last named countries war debts have ceased to have any meaning. Britain and Italy are “saving face” by paying a fraction of what they owe firm in the belief that the question of meeting war debts will degenerate into atrophy, when the whole troublesome question will receive a quiet burial. The inability of America and the European nations to agree to a war debt solution hinges on the question whether war debts were a charge on German reparations. As long as the Allies were receiving reparations from Germany they could not in conscience refuse to meet their own financial obligations, but when Germany could no longer bear the insufferable burden imposed on her by the Peace Treaty and was relieved by the Lausanne accord of nine-tenths of its obligations, with the other tenth remaining in suspense till credit conditions throughout the world improved, then the reparation creditors were faced with finding war debt payments out of their own pockets. This they feel, in the altered circumstances, they cannot do as it is entirely beyond their means.