NO TRADE REVIVAL

Hokitika Guardian, 20 August 1931, Page 3

NO TRADE REVIVAL

UNTIL CANCELLATION OF WAR DEBTS. Press Association—By Electri* Telegraph.—-Copyright.) LONDON, August 19. “I see no prospect of a. permanent improvement in trade •or unemployment, except through a drastic scaling down, or cancelling, of the .Reparations and the war debts,” declared' the Hon. Alexander : Shaw, Director of the Bank of England, in a speech delivered at Glasgow, in connection with the launching of the P. and 0. liner “Car hage.” He added ; “Whenevertrade and employment seems to revive, the general question of , reparations recurs, and down everything rolls to the- r bottom ! ' No ! amoim't" "of- business; energy or financial skill will cure the disease which ’i'-s keeping the British factories and shipyards idle! No jockjevinv of money values will cure it! Great blocks of certain countries’ production is pledged to be handed over to other countries to pay for past destruction. The mechanism of the foreign exchanges is. incapable of carrying such a burden, which has only been saved in recent years by th© creditor countries lending the debtor countries the bulk of the funds / with which to pay the reparations and the war debts. Wherever the creditor countries grow weary in the process, the situation of a debtor country like Germany grows desperate. Europe hangs over a pit till an international conference leads to an agreement to continue the lending process.’’