YOKE OF WAR DEBTS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 302, 21 December 1931, Page 1

YOKE OF WAR DEBTS.

Burden will Bring Unrest and Rebellion. U.S. BANKER’S OPINION. WASHINGTON, December 19. 3\lr C. E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank, giving testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, said that the heavy yoke of war debts was causing increasing unrest in Germany. To force as yet unborn generations to bear a burden for which they were not responsible would bring rebellion, he declared.

He was not preaching a doctrine of cancellation of war debts, he said, but he agreed that only a miracle could avert the necessity for a further moratorium at the end of the .present one.

Discussing foreign loan flotations, Mr Mitchell said that the National City Bank had handled 1,071,855,000 dollars in bonds since the war, and on these it had made a net profit amounting to 13,392,502 dollars. It had also participated in the syndication of 3,260,407,000 dollars in foreign securities, on which the net profits amounted to 11,463,501 dollars. Cancellation Opposed.

President Hoover’s arrangement for a war debt moratorium for one year has been approved by the House of Representatives by 317 votes to 100. It will now go to the Senate for completion of ratification. An amendment attached to the resolution of ratification placed on record that the House was opposed to cancellation or reduction of Europe’s war debt to the United States.

The Administration has proposed revision of debts as a measure separate from the moratorium.