WAR PREPARATIONS

Waipa Post, Volume 43, Issue 3329, 30 July 1931, Page 7

WAR PREPARATIONS

AMERICAN OPINION.

The following opinions of prominent Americans on the subject of war reparations are interesting at the present time: —

AS AN AMERICAN BANKER SEES IT.

Did we enter the war whole-heart-edly for the purpose of winning it at all costs, or did we participate as a business proposition ? We didn’t care a damn whether these foreign credits were liquidated or not; they were our contribution to the war. —C. H. Childs, of C. F. Childs and Co., Chicago. AS AN AMERICAN BARRISTER SEES IT. We helped England keep her soldiers in fighting trim by furnishing money for supplies produced in America. England asks nothing for her dead. We demand repayment of our money, with interest. We are the richest nation the world has ever seen. England is embarrassed as never before. America taxes an income of 5000 dollars but 37 h dollars; England taxes it 787 dollars. She is dependent for her revenue upon her trade, and our tariff wall practically excludes her from trade with us. Nothing is undamaged but her honour; nothing unshaken but the unshakable steadiness of her soul.

England proposed cancellation of all war debts at a net cost to her of six billion dollars, inasmuch as the nations owe her that amount over and above what she is said to owe us. We declined the proposal, and demand the uttermost farthing; and England now agrees to forgive her debtors all they owe her in excess of the amount we require of her. A striking contrast, that.

France is dreadfully poor and heavily taxed, incomes of £SOOO dollars paying 839 dollars instead of our 371 dollars. While she is struggling bravely to keep herself above water, the United States adds to her burden a weight well calculated to sink her. Of all the great European combatants in the war, France is the greatest sufferer, and Germany the least.”—F. W. Peabody. AS OTHERS SEE IT.

Z. C. Gillespie, Connecticut, says he is opposed to asking widows and orphans of dead Frenchmen to pay him for the boots their husbands and fathers wore while doing duty for him. General Pershing said: “ If it had not been that the allies were able to hold the line for fifteen months after we had entered the war, with the support of the loans we made, the war might well have been lost. We gave the money well knowing that it would be used to hold the Boche until we could prepare.” It is an accepted fact that Britain kept the seas free for the commerce and troop-transports of the allied world. What was that worth in terms of “ dollars ” ?

It is beyond dispute that without the loss of a single man more than half of the American armies in 1918 were taken over in British vessels convoyed by British warships. What was that worth, calculated in “ dollars ” ?

[When Britain, for the peace and betterment of Europe, proposed to the American Government to cancel the £2,060,000,000 owed to her by the allies if the United States would cancel £935,000,000, and the 'later Refused, was it a case of preferring “ dollars ”to ■** honour ” ? Would not America have still remained the richp est country in the world with the greatest stocks of gold ? England (meaning Great Britain) loaned her allies something like 'ten billion dollars, but not as a substitute for men. Upon the invasion of Belgium, she entered the war with her armies, and, before the awful death list made concription necessary, enlisted four million volunteers. England did that—loaned ten billion dollars and recruited four million volunteers.