GERMAN REPARATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19239, 1 August 1924, Page 7

GERMAN REPARATIONS

LONDON CONFERENCE. THE NEW FRENCH FORMULA. Brest Association —By Telegraph—Copyright. PARIS, July 30. The Reparations Commission, after -i lengthy deliberation yesterday, decided to go to London. Tho now French formula is commented upon from different points of view. It is approved by the Matin and L’CEuvrc’ as likely to solve all the questions at the conference, and it is denounced by Le Journal, which declares that the conference is drifting towards wreck, and by the Echo do Paris, which predicts its rejection of the formula by Anglo-Saxon financiers. — Reuter. A now French formula was submitted to the conference on Tuesday. It proposes recourse to arbitration should the Reparation Commission fail to agree on tho question of German default, one of the three arbitrators to bo an American. The attitude of the German Government towards the reparation experts’ reports was clearly stated by the Chancellor, Dr Wilhelm Marx, on June 4, when, with hia new Cabinet, ho met the Reichstag for the first time after the general election. He said on that occasion: “German economic and financial experts are unanimous that the desperate currency shortage must, be relieved with all possible speed. The German Government sees a way out oi financial disaster in the Dawes report. The- preparations for carrying out the report have by no means been delayed by the difficulties of forming a Government. The organisation committees for the gold bank. State railways, and industrial debentures have already taken their work in hand It will be their task to fill all gaps and to clear up all obscurities and textual inconsistencies in the report. The competence of agents must be made clear and delimited. Doubts concerning a German majority in the administration of the railways must be removed. When the committees have agreed on these points the Government will present the three draft bills relating to them before the legislative bodies. The activity of the General Agent for Reparation Payments must be defined in several details. According to the experts themselves, their report can be accepted or rejected only as a whole. “The German Government is ready to do all in its power to accelerate the preliminary work that has been begun and to put the report into actual practice. The laws, drafts, and ordinances drawn up by the German Government will come into force as soon as it is clearly and unambiguously established that the Allies also regard the report as an indivisible whole, when there is certainty that the Allies will also take all measures that are designated os necessary in the report for re-establishing Germany’s paying capacity. To restore all exiles and all prisoners in French and Belgian hands is an indispensable aim from which tho German Government will not draw back. “As soon as the report has been accepted and carried out in the spirit of loyalty in which it was conceived, Germany will again be on a treaty basis with her creditors. This will involve that in the old occupied area the Rhineland agreement is restored and faithfully applied and that the areas occupied outside the Treaty of Versailles are evacuated.”