REDUCE ALL WAR DEBTS

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 197, 20 August 1931, Page 1

REDUCE ALL WAR DEBTS

British Banker Advises Scaling Down. BURDEN CRUSHING TRADE. United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, August 19. “ I see no prospect of any permanent improvement in trade or employment except through drastic scaling down or cancelling of reparations and war debts,” declared the Hon Alexander Shaw, a director of the Bank of England, in a speech delivered at Glasgow in connection with the launching of the P. and O. liner Carthage. “ Whenever trade and employment seem to revive,” he continued, “ the eternal question of reparations recurs and down everything rolls to the bottom. No amount of business energy or financial skill will cure *he disease which is keeping British factories and shipyards idle. No jockeying of money values will cure it. Great blocks of the production of certain countries are pledged to be handed over to other countries to pay for past destruction, and the mechanism of foreign exchanges is incapable of carrying such a burden which has only been saved in recent years by creditor lending debtor countries the bulk of the funds with which to pay reparations and war debts. Wherever creditor countries grow weary of this process, the situation of the debtor country, like Germany, grows desperate and Europe hangs over a pit until an international conference leads to an agreement to continue the lending process.” REVISION URGED IN U.S.A. American Opinion Favours Overhaul. (Received August 20, 9 a.m.) WASHINGTON, August 19. Administration circles were silent today on the matter of the Wiggins Bankers’ Committee report, which recommends revision of the whole war debts and reparations structure. At the White House it was said that President Hoover after reading the Press reports was uncommunicative. One high official of the State Department described the report as of “great importance.” He made no further comment. A New York message says that the recommendations created considerable satisfaction in Wall Street banking circles, being in line with the opinions recently expressed informally by prominent bankers.