ECONOMIC BATTLE IF LOAN REJECTED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 90, Issue 56, 8 March 1946, Page 5

ECONOMIC BATTLE IF LOAN REJECTED

INVESTMENT IN PEACE AND PROSPERITY

Speaking at the Senate Banking and Currency Committee hearings on the proposed Anglo-American loan, the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. F. M. Vinson, urged that the loan should be approved and that it also be interest-free as dn “arrangement between members of a family." He had no doubt that the principle would be repaid. Describing the loan as an investment in peace and prosperity, Mr. Vinson said: "Chance of maintaining peace will be immeasurably better in a world from which economic warfare has been eliminated.”

In a grim picture o£ what would happen i£ the loan were rejected, Mr. Vinson said the alternative would be an economic batlie between the sterling and dollar bloc systems. Although the United States would probably win the battle, it would be a victory at u very heavy loss and one in which all countries would suffel.

Mr. Vinson said that if Britain and the United States should drift into such a conflict it would be a tragedy for all "We should find that our trade decreased and that our people were unemployed," he said. "Britain would find that her standard of living had deteriorated and that her people were impoverished. The consequences, to world prosperity and even to world peace would be disastrous." Stressing Britain's need for the loan in order to restore and expand her export trade, Mr. Vinson said that the wartime damage to her economicposition was even worse than the destruction she had suffered from bombing.