REPARATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18871, 25 May 1923, Page 7

REPARATIONS

GERMANY’S OBLIGATIONS. NEW NOTE DRAFTED. A HOPEFUL FEATURE. Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright BERLIN, May 23,. ' Though it is likely that the change of Prime Minister in England -will delay the German reply, preparations for n new offer are proceeding without interruption. A definite basis has not yet been decided on. Ministers will refuse to put their names to anything they believe that Germany cannot pay, while what she can pay is beyond the capacity of anybody to estimate. Tire leaders of the various parties are pressing for rapid action. Suggestions regarding guarantees continue to pile up. The latest is the reservation of the Customs and Excise revenue and the railway surplus; but the railways, notwithstanding an increase of 100 per cent, in fares, are run at a dead loss, while the Customs and Excise, which are collected in paper marks, have a steadily diminishing value. The most hopeful feature at the present stage is the oftrepeated remark that German industry, ev.en agriculture, would gladly make a heavy sacrifice if there were any element of finality.—The Times. The now reparations Note has been drafted. Well-informed circles state that Germany will not increase the amount of her offer, . but that she will modify her international loan proposals with offers of more definite guarantees.—A. and N.Z. Cable. FRENCH PRESSURE. GREAT DYE WORKS SEIZED. PARIS, May 23. (Received May 24, at 8.15 p.m.) The French have occupied the great dye works at Oppau and also at Dorsten where they seized goods valued at thousands of millions of marks, including a train laden with spare parts from the Krupps works. —A. an'd N.Z. Cable. FRANCE AND BELGIUM. PARIS, May 23. (Received May 24, at 8.15 p.m.) M. Theunis (Belgian Prime Minister) and M. Jaspar (Belgian Foreign Minister) will confer with M. Poincare in Paris on Sunday.—A. and N.Z. Cable. WHERE THE MONEY COES GERMANY AND REPARATION. I have recently returned from a tour of industrial Germany with an itching to ask some practical questions of a nature which our politicians, professors, and other experts seem strangely unwilling to Answer or even consider, writes Herbert Kendrick in the Daily Mail. Germany, I understand, owes us and the other Allies a pretty sum of money—whether the original figure fixed at £11,300,000,000. in 1921 or the subsequently reduced sum of £6,600,000,000 makes no matter. The point is Germany has made no effort, or practically none, to discharge this huge indebtedness, but has used every possible device to escape paying. Now, in business life, when a trader does not pay his bills some little grace is allowed if he is a “going concern,” but as time rolls on and the default continues, and the debtor is seen to be making an astonishing “splash” in private !ife ( creditors call a halt and put in an official receiver in bankruptcy. My practical questions are these: Why have we not put in an official receiver to see that Germany used her money and resources first to pay her just debts, before she squandered millions on costly and luxurious schemes in her own country ? Why has Germany been allowed to reparato herself in so thorough and handsome a manner while the Allies have been left to whistle for their money? Hero are some of the schemes spendthrift Germany lias carried through in the past three years:— She has reconstructed her northern towns destroyed by the Russians. She has rebuilt nearly four million tons of shipping at a time when the carrying trade of the world is at its wits’ end to know what to do with its surplus tonnage—there are nearly 10 million tons of shipping laid up to-day. The great municipalities have all carried through costly schemes or road and tramway repair and extension. The new hotels and bank expansion schemes in the big towns are a byword. Prewar Germany had enough banks for her pre-war trade; why is she permitted to double the accommodation when her legitimate trade has been halved ? Those are only a few of the undertakings into which Germany has been, and is still, pouring milliards of marks and oceans of energy, most of which my super-official receiver would have turned down with; — “\Vell enough in their way—but pay your debts first.” My official receiver would sternly refuse to sanction the capital expenditure of public money on those schemes, on the ground that they are not matters of immediate necessity. He would have forbidden the immense expenditure on the construction of the huge underground railway now approaching completion in Berlin. He would stop the expenditure of milliards of marks on the building of the new 400-miles canal which is to connect the Danube with the Rhine for ships of 1500 tons. My official receiver would also severely limit the extravagant expenditure on the many State theatres and opera houses throughout Germany. At Berlin’s beautiful Stale opera house I enjoyed a magnificent performance of “The Meistcrsingers,” but times and the reparation payments being so bad my official receiver would have halved the chorus and out the orchestra of 80 down to one fiddle and a drum. To balance your Budget is surely more important than to balance your orchestra. And, lastly, why is Berlin, already possessed of one famous opera house, now allowed to spend millions of marks on constructing an entirely new one? My official receiver, holding the nation’s purse strings wisely, certainly would not sanction this grandiose new building, now rising up in the park, as a work of necessity.