JOHN BULL, UNIVERSAL "UNCLE."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7507, 15 September 1902, Page 3

JOHN BULL, UNIVERSAL "UNCLE."

HE LENDS "MONEY TO ALL ' NATIONS. (Pearson's Weekly.) There is not a country in the world which has not had to borrow money from the British Isles, and there are few Governments which havo not had to fall back upon John Bull when they've been in Queer Street. There are hundreds of millions of British capital which has been borrowed by foreign countries, and which are now bad debts. The smaller States of America) are especially notorious in $iis respect. Guatemala has borrowed a large amount of British capital. How do matters stand to-day? The bonds for £100 are worth somewhere about £23 only, and. there lias been no payment of interest since June, 1899. Even then, only a paltry 2 per cent was paid, and half of that was not in cash. Honduras is a far worse debtor. The bonds which have a face value of £100 are dear dt £s—you5 — you would be lucky if you could get that amount for one. All this is owing ' to the fact that Honduras spends far more than it earns. It borrowed £5,398,670 during the three years ending with 1870, and it promised to pay 10 per cent interest for the loan.

It is easy to promise. As a, matter of fact, not one penny piece has .Honduras paid since 1872. . The result is that enormous arrears of interest hate accumulated. Honduras must now owe somewhere about £20,000,000 sterling. ji Colombia, strictly speaking, owes British investors three ' and a half million pounds. Nearly the whole of these debts are due to British creditors. This particular Republic, in 1897, called its creditors together, and made them an offer of a composition of so much in the pound. It wiped out its old debt by giving new bonds for £2,700,000, on which it paid 1£ per cent interest. » Even other countries, about which we know far more, such as Greece and Turkey, are almost as. bad. A Greek £100 bond is worth from £31 to £44, according to its class. A Turkish bond, "Series D," is worth "but £26. That is" why British creditors sigh. Our Continental friends may snap and I snarl at us, but the fact is that many of the Continental countries have been glad enough to accept monetary help from us. Moreover, some of them have conveniently' forgotten all about these transactions, otherwise we might have been at least fifty million: pounds richer to-day. There is none so generous as bluff John, Bull. Omitting all such gifts as the one! of £20,000,000, which he gave to cause the abolition of slavery, let us see how he has helped some of Ms poorer neighbours. Greece owes her very existence to Joiha Bull. Then the money she owes M<ml This roust amount to somewhere about two and a, half millions, excluding the loan of 1898, all of whioh is gone hopelessly. The latter loan was one of £6,800,000, and was guaranteed by Britain, Prance and Russia, each country being liable for a I/bird 1 of it. Should France and Russia decide to renounce their liability, poor old John will! have to go bail for the full amount. Very likely, this loan will never be repaid). Greece's old task-master is another unfortunate debtor. In 1881^ the Ottoman Government, being unable to meet its liabilities, ' was obliged to call together its creditors in order to enter into an arrangement with them. John Bull must have ai sum of about four millions .owing to him by Turkey. This sum is the balance still owing of a loan of five millions made in 1855 in order to 'help Turkey to fight Russia. An item in John Bull's accounts is a sum of over £300,000, which figures under the heading, "Russian Dutch Loan Act, 1891." The total amount of the loan, was really £2,083,333, but a fair portion of it was given, as a solatium for certain of her possessions whioh he had conquered. Hoiland) was also indebted to Russia, so Joflin most considerately lent her -the money to pay off this debt. He agreed to pay 5 per cent interest on the loan of two millions, and, in addition, to wipe out a hundredth part of the original debt every year. In 1915, he will have paid off tie £300,000 now owing, but the actual money he will have pulled, out of his capacious purse, in connection with this affair, wail be tihe gigantic sum of over eight million pounds. Italy is a very decent country, and has kept good faith with her ally, John. Year by year she has paid' back a portion of the sum she owes, and now her indebtedness to John is only about a couple of hundred thousand pounds. Egypt owes a loan obtained so recently as 1897. In Jolm Bull's account of 'his expenditure there is a heading, " Special Services : Egyptian Government, Grant in, Aid." Under this is an amount of £798,802. This is because John lent Egypt some thing better than mere money. He lent her men. -with brains, who have made her into 8' healthy, prosperous country of tihe sort that pay off their debts in full. Egypt has other debts than monetary debts to pay off. This is on interesting item, for, to speak without equivocation', John lent this sum in order to circumvent France. The true history of that Itoan is too long to relate here, but it was a bold stroke for John, and it is nob likely to be a bad debt either.