BRITAIN HAS GOOD BILL AGAINST AMERICA.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15754, 28 February 1919, Page 5

BRITAIN HAS GOOD BILL AGAINST AMERICA.

MAY OFF-SET LOANS. PAtylS, December 21. Great Britain has presented to thsj United States a bill for JC'-iO for every officer and soldier transported to Franca on a British ship of the better classj For bringing a soldier to Europe in a veesel of the second class its bill already presented is .£25. Since some 60 per cent, of our more than 2£00,000 men in France were carried over in British ships 7it is easy to figure out the total claim at something like iSJCw 000,000. Great Britain will have other large money claims against the United States. Enormous stretches of English fanning lands have been given up to the uses o< the American training camps and for

other military purposes. I am not able to gire anything like an estimate of the total amount of the bill Great Britain wil present to the United States when the nations come to balance accounts at the Peace Conference, but it will ba to many people disconcertingly large,, although reports that these bills am to be presented have already in a raeasuM given the American people a forecast off the charges. France will also have a huge WBa American armies ha»e occupied hundreds of square miles of French «wfl aad in training and practice have destroyed vaet quantities of French property. There- will be rent or damages to pay to a vast amount. It ie without question that sentimentalists in the United

States are going to get a terrific jar when the Peace Conference has the intemational war bills presented to it fog

balancing and settlement. It may even be that the totals of these bills will go far towards balancing the loans of billions which the United States made to its Allies during the war. » At any rate, those Americans who hare urged the United States should csncef its war loans to at least some of the Allies are in for a horrible shock. They find that the Allies have kept tteiP own accounts ready to present. It may be said that the Americas peace commissioners are not prepared to admit the justice of some of these claims, at least, not until after serious

argument. They have already expressed themselves as considering the British claims for bringing American soldi ere to France unreasonably high. They wiU by no means play the part of easy nurim in a financial way. It may be said that the financial problems growing out of the war bill will be solved and settled at the preliminary conferences before the international Peace Commission begins its formal sittings. At any rate, the people at Home nay as well try to understand the European point of view. It is that, though the United States has lent millions to its Allies, all that money has been spent in the United States for supplies and munitions of war. And for most o (• these supplies and munitions Great Britain and France were charged extremely high prices. They feel that they were made to pay through the nose and that they are justified in making fheir own bills correspondingly generous. 'ftiat* at least, is the argument which ia unofficially advanced. It is not likely that the financial differences will ever be great enough to cause a serious breach among the Allied nations at the Peace Conference, but they illustrate one of the several kinds of difficulties which the Conference must face and solve.