MUST CO-OPERATE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 254, 18 June 1932, Page 5

MUST CO-OPERATE

(British Official Wireless)

WAR REPARATIONS URGENT NEED TO COMBAT WORLD WIDE CRISIS. mr. macdonald's speech.

RUGBY, Friday. During his opening address as chairman to the delegates of the 18 natioas assembled at the Reparations Conference at Lausanne, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald stressed the extreme gravity and urgency of the problem confronting them. The economic crisis, the British >rime Minister said, was such that l0 country could expect to be imuine from its effect. It was a world risis. None could stay out of the /oi'lc of restoration and reconstrucion. They were to eonsider one of he eauses of their distress — the finncial inheritance of the war, and an greemont must he reached regardig it. Mr. MacDonald cited the report of ie Basle experts, which insisted iat the inter-Government debts iust he revised, and declared that ie urgency of their appeal had been nderlined hy all that had happened nce that report was issued. They iust romember in all their deliberaons and bargainings that the world )oked to them, not only in need, it witli impatience. It was the essence of their task that they should act speedily for an agreement reached quickly would have an effect a hunclred times more beneficial than one painfully and imperfectly secured at the last moment of exhaustion. One principle definitely before the mferonce was that an engagement jlemnly entered into could not he itisfiod hy unilateral repudiation. Ile elieved that principle was not chalinged hy any of the delegates, but carried the corollary that if there ere. to be no default, engagements liich had proved incapable of ful[menl must be revised by agreeent. Great Opportunity. Mr. MacDonald added "I believe iat a great opportunity now premts itsclf for us to unite in checkg the aetive influences now making ir general economic deterioration ; avc do this Europe cannot act one. We must all welcome the asrance that after the present phase over the United States will enmrage us to believe she will cojerate in an examination, at any te, of the wide problems, and join itli us in devising a policy for the aintenance of civilisation, which all he hased on the prosperity of 1 nations." The conference, after the opening ;ting adjourned until to-morrow e intervnl being spent in arrangg the programme. Both to-moi'-w's meetings will be private. The discussions will be opened by e German Chancellor, Ilerr Von pen, with a statement of Germany's onomic situation.