MARSHALLING OF FACTS

Taranaki Daily News, 1 December 1932, Page 5

MARSHALLING OF FACTS

BRITISH REPLY TO STATES

MOST FATEFUL DOCUMENT

ECONOMIC .CONSEQUENCES

LAUSANNE AGREEMENTS

British Wireless. Rugby, Nov. 29. It is generally recognised that the new war debt Note to the United States will be one of the most important official documents issued by Britain since the end of the war. The utmost care is being taken to see that the British case is adequately stated in its substance and in a correct form.

At present it is not intended by the Government to undertake formal consultations With other party leaders. There have obviously been some aspects of the debt situation requiring full and most careful consideration. It has been necessary that the reasons for an extension of the moratorium should be stated in some detail, supported by facts of incontrovertible accuracy.

According to the newspapers the examination of the situation being tradertaken by the Ministers includes also an assessment of the effect of every method of payment, whether by gold, sterling or dollars, and upon these and kindred questions a mass of technical data has been produced. Among many other considerations to be borne in mind is the effect upon the Lausanne agreements, whether Britain’s payments could conceivably be continued without reopening the questions on which the settlement was there reached, and whether Britain could go on paying the United States without receiving anything from those countries which owe her money. • • It is economic consequences of the Inter-governOnental debts which receive most attention in the British Press. The newspapers generally take the view expressed in the 'News-Chronicle by Sir Walter Layton, editor of the Economist, who, after pointing out the effect of the American tariff, one of the highest m the world, upon the flow of goods, declares: “There is no device known to the science of economics or to the art of finance which will enable a creditor to go on collecting debts due to it if it does not receive the goods and services of the debtois.” Uncertainty over the war debt question is having a severely restricted effect on the London Stock Exchange. In authoritative quarters a confident view is taken that neither the movement in the exchange nor the fall in British funds need cause alarm, for once a decision with regard to the war debt payment has been reached the causes which brought about the recent riSe in high grade investments Will resume their influence. A later message states that trie Premier, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, and Mr. Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, had audiences with the King. ‘TOUBLE-EDOED WEAPON” CONSEQUENCE OF DEFAULT WARNING FROM MR. AMERY By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright. London, Nov. 29. Mr. L. C. M. S. Amery at Birmingham said Britain could not refuse payment of the American war debt simply because it was unpleasant or because others were defaulting. Repudiation would be a double-edged weapon for Britain, which was still the greatest creditor nation in the world, being owed, apart from war debts, four times more by the rest of the world than it owed America. . “The consequences of our default would strike us in the face from every quarter,” said Mr. Amery. “We at present are engaged in insisting that the Free State should fulfil its obligations. Must we admit that we have been wrong? Mr. de Valera would be right in saying that a nation’s pledges meant nothing if their fulfilment, happened to be inconvenient. There was a tremendous election in Australia based on whether she should fulfil her obligation*;, but she honoured them. Are we now going to tell Australia that what she fought for in order to preserve her honour was a piece of foolish Quixotism? "What security shall we have if our example shows that pacts and pledges mean nothing? We cannot repudiate, despite the burden imposed on us if others refuse to pay. Doubtless we, like the Americans, regard the suplies they sold us in war time at a stiff price not as a business transaction but as a common effort, but the Americans are entitled to point to the letter of our signed bond and the fact that Mr. Baldwin repeated the bond after the war. America cannot have it both ways. She can have it in debts or trade. If that is made clear to America it will bring us much nearer a settlement than any amount of reasoned dispatches.* 1

LOAN WAS IN FORM OF GOODS.

TARIFF WATT, EMBARRASSING.

British Official Wireless. Rec. 5.5 p.m. Rugby, Nov. 29. The simple fact about debt settlement to America was that the debt was incurred at a time of necessity and the money was lent not in the form of this or that currency but in the form of goods, said Sir Thomas Inskip (AttorneyGeneral) at Gosport to-night. If America chose to erect a tariff wall which made it impossible for Britain to repay in goods what was borrowed in goods obviously an embarrassing situation arose. One should try, however, to visualise the situation as it appeared to America, whose attitude on the subject of payment was readily understood.