THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, JULY 17, 1924. THE LONDON CONFERENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18763, 17 July 1924, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, JULY 17, 1924. THE LONDON CONFERENCE.

With the assembling of the London Conference a definitely new attempt to solve the reparations problem is afoot. Its personnel alone is sufficient to give it distinction as such an attempt. The British Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer; the United States' Ambassador; the French Premier and his Finance Minister; the Finance Minister of Italy; the Premier of Belgium, who is also Finance Minister, and his Minister for Foreign Affairs; leading Japanese statesmen: these, with other representatives of all the countries involved, compose an assembly unexampled save by the Versailles Conference itself. It ranks with that conference also in vital importance. This conference has a promisingly definite starting-point in the Dawes, report, with which the McKenna committee's findings will be taken as virtually an integral part of the major report. These two committees have achieved a double purpose: they have produced facts and propounded a policy. In-their thoroughgoing inquiry into the economic condition of Germany they have set out evidence that it is impossible to gainsay, and closed the door to loose statement as to Germany's actual and potential ability to make reparations payments. So long as such adequate information was lacking there was room for specious pleading by both debtor and creditor nations. To have reduced that possibility materially is no light gain. As to the proposal itself, it does not deal with the total amount that Germany is to pay. That is left to the Reparation Commission as its. business. But a graduated scale of stated annual payments is recommended, together with means to ; secure them and means also to meet Germany's immediate financial need by raising a foreign loan.

The proposal may not receive the endorsement of the conference as a preliminary to its review by the Reparation Commission and subsequent report to the national Governments concerned. But the conference, should it reject the proposal, is under moral obligation to propound another. To disperse without reaching some practicable plan for the Commission's consideration would be to admit the bankruptcy of international negotiation, a result almost unthinkable in the circumstances. Yet the task set is difficult in the extreme. Nominally engaged in a financial consultation, the conference is liable to be swayed by political motives and emotions. It is bound to hark back to fundamental national viewpoints, with their preconceptions and prejudices. A vital recommendation in the Dawes report, it must not be forgotten, is the evacuation of the Ruhr. The committee's calculation of Germany's ability to pay is based upon the by the committee as essehtial, of " the economic and financial unity of the Reich." This has been claimed as " a point of capital importance " to France, and will certainly not be conceded unless the French representatives are assured that they are not letting go the substance of occupation for the shadow of substituted guarantees. Round that point discussion will gather at the outset. The view that France has,' really nothing to gain by prolonging that occupation, that indeed she has lost by it, will not readily be accepted by the French representatives, and in this they will have the'sympathy of the Belgians present. A majority will probably be prepared to endorse the view of the Dawes committee in this, and in the consideration already given to the committee's findings even M. Herriot and M. Theunis have shown a willingness to accept it. But they cannot be unaffected by protests uttered in their own countries, and fear of provoking political enmity there may embarrass them and' retard unanimity in the conference.

It is inevitable also that some provisions of the Versailles Treatywill be vigorously debated. The French view has tended to demand the execution of the treaty, the whole treaty, and nothing but the treaty. For that view there is an excellent prima facie case. The treaty dictated to Germany the conditions of peace, and it is not unreasonable to demand, that the conditions should be fulfilled! to the letter by the defeated nation proved guilty of precipitating the war. If civilisation is to be secure, agreement between peoples must be honoured as having all the force that international law can give. Without challenging that position, however, the British representatives, and some others, will be constrained to press the 1 point that France herself has, by action taken subsequent to the treaty, broken its provisions. Can the treaty be cited in defence of the military occupation of German territory outside the particular zone for whose occupation special provision was made in that instrument? Did the treaty give a right, to any of the Allied Powers, to institute outside that zone a martial control,! accompanied by'the erection of aj customs barrier and the seizure of j public and private property 1 Was! any colour of such a right given by Germany's default in performance of treaty obligations? The treaty was a contract between two parties, the Allies of the one part and Germany of the other. It created a single debt owed jointly to the Allies, and provided for a joint Allied body's collection of that debt. To the joint creditor was given the right, in the event of the debtor's 1 default, to notify th© default and recommend

action. This, which has been the British view of the treaty's provisions, will be again pressed upon the nations that have been involved in action apart from the rest of the Allies; and this view, it is interesting to note, has now tacit acceptance by all participants in the conference. They come together to consider a default and recommend action. So the London Conference brings the Allies back to the parting of the ways where France elected to take her own course.