THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, JULY 12, 1932. THE REPARATIONS SETTLEMENT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21694, 12 July 1932, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, JULY 12, 1932. THE REPARATIONS SETTLEMENT.

The Lausanne agreement on reparations has been hailed as a victory for reason, as undoubtedly it is. Lord Rothermere is with the great majority on this, occasion in welcoming it as foreshadowing better times in Europe and, the world. WRen he declares that the agreement came as a distinct surprise he suggests that the general expectations with respect to the conference were not very hopeful. Had the Governments conferring at Lausanne failed to solve the major problem confronting them the general verdict would no doubt have been that such a result might have been expected in view of past experience of attempts to subordinate national demands to international necessities. Under the heading “Doctors’ Dilemmas” the Manchester Guardian presented recently an instructive picture of the world on a bed of sickness around which doctors have gathered. They are agreed, more or less, as to what ails the patient and can predict what will happen unless a cure is found. They see a crisis approaching, but they cannot agree concerning the remedy. The article served to emphasise how dubious were the prospects for the conference which was to assemble at Lausanne a few weeks later. “ The politicians of the world, in their combined international effect,” observed a well-known writer in the May issue of the Contemporary Review, “have hardly ever done constructive work. They have destroyed things, life, trade, property, without end. They will probably continue to be destructive in the future as in the past.” Criticism of this kind finds its basis in the difficulties attending international agreement. Again, the author of an article in the Round Table for June was not sanguine of the results to be expected from Lausanne. He wrote: “The Conference can do-more than any other single agency to restore confidence and thus to launch a revival of world trade: it can also' postpone that revival indefinitely. In a sense the problem of reparations has solved itself, since a renewal of reparation payments is not in sight. But what the world needs is not acquiescence in a temporary default, but a lasting settlement as part of an honourable modus vivendi between Prance and Germany. It is idle to speculate on the prospects of the Conference. All but the strongest Governments are the servants of their public opinion, and it seems unlikely that either Prance or Germany will be represented at Lausanne by a Government drawn from an assured and durable majority in Parliament or the country.” As thus presented, the outlook was not promising. The difficulties to be overcome at Lausanne were really very formidable, particularly where France was concerned, and the respective positions of M. Herriot and Herr von Papen in the matter of their authority to conduct negotiations so important were scarcely such as to encourage high hopes that they, would be able to reach a satisfactory understanding. Misgivings on these and other grounds were not allayed as the discussions dragged on with little apparent promise of any better result than a barren deadlock. Yet the persevering efforts of Mr Ramsay MacDonald, who was ably supported by Mr Neville Chamberlain and Sir John Simon, were not iwasted. At the last moment the seemingly impossible was accomplished, the gulf bridged, and a series of instruments signed which, apart from certain reactions in Germany, may be said to have excited the plaudits of the world. The omen is a good one for international conferences that are to follow. A demonstration has been given of what the statesmen of the nations can do if they are sufficiently agreed that action of a particular kind is imperative. At Lausanne they bowed to the stern logic of economic experience. The economic impasse served to bring them together in a mood sufficiently inclined towards agreement to enable them to make a beginning in removing the disastrous effects of conditions which are a legacy of the war. As the Economist has observed, an agreement regarding reparations and war debts is what the lawyers call a “condition precedent” to recovery, and it has been made very clear that unless such conditions are created the world must go from bad to worse. The result of the initial attack upon the basic obstacles to recovery is distinctly encouraging.