EUROPEAN DEBT

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 260, 27 June 1932, Page 8

EUROPEAN DEBT

BRITAIN SHOULD DECLARE READINESS TO ABSOLVE DEFAULTERS LAUSANNE MUST ACT LONDON, Saturday. There is no reason why Britaia should not declare her readiness to absolve any country renouncing her right to reparations, says a leading article in ''The Times." Such a declaration, it continues, may prove a powerful stimulus, especially in view of the fact that Italy favours the principle of cancellation. Prance, too, is less unfavourable than previously. M. Herriot's cordial invitation to Mr. MacDonald and Sir John Simon, and his declaration that both sides possess the same good will, are favourable signs. Emphasising that the Lausanne conference meets only a fortnight before the end of the Hoover truce and that thereafter there will be only a fortnight's grace before the first reparation payments are due, the article urges that it is absolutely essential for the stability of Europe that the world meeting should not disperse without a firm decision regarding reparations. Bold Lead The business at the Paris meeting to-morrow, in view of the disappointing absence of America, is to discover what measure of legal cancellation is possible in European inter-govern-mental debts, which, in any case, are not going to be paid for some time. Mr. MacDonald should be in a position to give a bold lead to hasten the ultimate inevitable cancellation.