DEBT PAYMENTS

Taranaki Daily News, 23 April 1932, Page 5

DEBT PAYMENTS

BRITISH BUDGET OMISSION

NOT DECLARATION OF POLICY

SATISFACTION IN STATES

REQUEST FOR FORMAL 1.0. U.

ANTI-REVISION CLAMOUR

By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright.

Ree. 7.45 p.m. Washington, April 21. Official circles here received with noticeable satisfaction an announcement at London that the omission of debt payments from the British Budget did not constitute a declaration of policy. “That is fair enough,” observed Senator Reed, an administration spokesman who was among the first to declare upon the recent British decision that the United States expected ite debt payments after the one-year moratorium.

Mr. Neville Chamberlain’s statement is generally accepted as an assurance that no general move for an extension of the moratorium will be made by the debtor nations of Europe. Forward requests have gone to the nations which benefited by the moratorium, which expires next June, to place in legal form their agreements to pay the United States their postponed war debt instalments over a ten-year period. This new element has stirred considerable interest because of ite coincidino- with the renewed clamour over cancellation or revision of war debts and the omission from the British Budget of the debt item, but State Department officials maintain that it was a routine step which had been delayed much longer than normally. Partly at least this w r as because the moratorium beginning last July was not ratified by Congress until mid-winter. Whether the administration’s hope for the success of President Hoover’s proposal that the war debt funding commission should be revived was a factor in the long delay was a matter for speculation. Congress put the quietus on that immediately after the suggestion had been advanced and at every opportunity members have reasserted their unalterable opposition to anything bordering on cancellation moves by the United States. There has been every indication that the administration haS accepted the situation and had no intention of going any further.