FRANCE'S DEBT

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 157, 31 December 1931, Page 8

FRANCE'S DEBT

SAVED BY BRITAIN

LONDON, 21st December. "Has France forgotten?" asks Lord Moynihan, President of the Eoyal Collogo of Surgeons, medical writer and lecturer, and also holder of a brilliant war record, .in a letter to "The Times" apropos of French attacks on Britain's tariff attitude. He adds that Britain's entry into the war saved France from extinction. "When the French mutinied ■we held the line. We compounded Franco's war debt at £600,000,000, remitting two-thLrds, and when the franc dropped to one-tenth of its value wo did not suggest an anti-French tariff. France raised war loans in Britain, based on an exchange rate of 25 francs to the pound, but repudiated four-fifths of the debt by depreciating tho franc to twopence.'' Lord Moynihan's letter has started a controversy in the columns of "The Times." Major do Montmorency, who served in both the Boer War and the Great War, in which ho won ' many decorations, declares that apparently Englishmen havo entirely forgotten France's terrible sacrifices. Without Franco Englishmen would to-day bo under the helotry of Prussian Junkers, as Frenchmen held four-fifths of the line for two years while England was creating an army.