GERMAN NOTE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17032, 4 May 1923, Page 7

GERMAN NOTE.

WANTS ELASTIC FACTOR. EVACUATION OF THE RUHR FOUR YEARS’ MORATORIUM. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Received May 4, 9.5 a.m.) LONDON, May 3. The official text of the German Note states that Germany refuses to renounce her passive resistance until the j territories occupied beyond the Treaty of Versailles have been evacuated. Notwithstanding the events of the last few months, Germany is ready to fulfil all she can for reparations. Every solution, however, must include an elastic factor, as it is impossible to put forward an infallible estimate. Germany cannot raise capital sums out of her own resources ns her trade balance shows no surplus. She therefore stands in need of a foreign loan, and proposes I that Germany’s total obligations for deliveries in cash and kind should be fixed at thirty milliards of gold marks, which would be raised by three loans on the international money market, the first instalment of twenty milliards by July. 1927, five milliards by July, 1929, and five milliards by July, 1931. The interest of 5 per cent and sinking fund of 1 per cent would be paid after July, 1927. If the two later loans cannot be fully raised within the time limit, it will be left to an impartial International Commission to decide how the rest is to be raised. This is the utmost limit that Germany is able to pay, but if the others do not share this opinion, the German Government proposes to submit the reparations problem to an International Commission, as Mr C. E. Hughes suggested. The Government is prepared to devise suitable measures in order that the whole of the German national resources shall participate in guaranteeing the service of loans. It is. however. necesnry that the high-handed seizure of pledges and sanctions should cee'jo in future. This implies that the stipulations of the Versailles Treaty, refusing economic eounlitv to Germany, should cease. The first esentinl to negotiations must be the restoration of tlm status quo ante in the shortest, possible time and also the release of German prisoners, while those exnelleJ must be allowed to return to the Ruhr.