Against Britain

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 748, 22 August 1929, Page 9

Against Britain

ITALY STILL STANDS OUT Reparation Share-Out PROBLEM BEATS ALL THE EXPERTS (United I*.A.—By Telegraph Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association J, l (United. Service) Received 11 a.m. THE HAGUE, Wednesday. SIGNOR PIRELLI (Italy) visited Mr. Philip Snowden, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, and told him that Italy was unable to yield any part of her share of the reparations payments.

It is authoritatively announced in British circles there that the financial experts have reported that it is not possible to reply to the questions submitted to them. They have found they cannot agree about the value of the concessions offered to Britain by the other four Powers and the hundred and one other factors upon which the allocations are dependent. Consequently, the experts say, the Ministers themselves must grapple with the problem. REMARKABLE MISTAKE MORE MONEY FOR FRANCE THAN WAS INTENDED £5,000,000 INVOLVED (Australian and N.Z. Press Association J LONDON, Wednesday. The “Daily Telegraph” today publishes a remarkable announcement from its diplomatic correspondent. It is to the effect that an amazing clerical error was made in the preparation of the Young Plan. The correspondent says the error arose in the following manner: —The first 37 annuities allotted to France were added up, and then divided for the purpose of working out the average of the French annuity. In the table annexed to the Young report, the French annuity is given as 1.046,500,000 gold marks —that is, £52,325,000, which under - ostimal its real value by nearly 100,000,000 goi.. marks, or nearly £5,000,000. On that basis, says the correspondent, France’s share of the Young annuity would be, not her Spa percentage of 52, or even the 1925 Paris percentage of 54, but a percentage in the neighbourhood of 57. It is not explained how the ex-

perts or their calculating machine made such a mistake, but the discovery of the error is of great moment, as the excess of 5 per cent, allotted to France over and above what the Young Committee intended should enable her to restore something like fair quotas to Britain and some of the smaller Powers. This reference in the "Telegraph” is the first public one made to such an error. Whether so extraordinary a happening can have gone unnoticed until the present is .at least doubtful. The full significance of the error, if it is an error, can only be ascertained when the experts’ report comes to hand. INTERNATIONAL BANK EXPERT TELLS WHY LONDON WANTS IT (Australian and N.Z. Press Association). (United Service) Reed. 9.5 a.m. VANCOUVER, Wed. “The London money market wants the proposed International Bank located in London, owing to doubts whether the bank, if located in any other major money market, would be allowed to operate without constant political Professor T. E. Gregory, the London banking and economic expert, told the Institute of Politics at Williamstown, Massachusetts, on Wednesday. “Pre-war experience shows that in Paris the issue of international loans was frequently made subordinate .to French foreign policy. London did not want the working of the new bank to be exposed to similar ’ dangers.” He declared that the proposed International Bank would be concerned primarily with reparations, and with more general hanking problems.