"LICE CREATION"

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 275, 15 July 1932, Page 4

"LICE CREATION"

Agreement on the reparations question is said to be complete. Germany is to pay no more to Britain, Italy and the smaller nations, while France is to receive in restoration money some £150,000,000 to be paid when Germany has recovered from the financial depression. The Young Plan, under which the liability was reduced to £2,000,000,000, involving annual payments of from £40,000,000 to £60,000,000, now amounts to only half the indemnity claimed from France by Germany after the war of 1870-71, and duly paid. • Simultaneously international war debt agreements have been reached between Britain, France and Italy respectively, and these tentatively prescribe a three years' moratorium, probahly with a view to enabling America j to arrange for a revision. But ! the United States Government is | immediately concerned with af- ! fairs at Geneva where the quesi tion of disarmamept is being disI cussed. President Hoover's pro- | posals were not favourably rej ceived by the leading European ! Powers, but there are signs that • something useful in theo diree-

tion indicated will be agreed upon now that Germany has been freed from the incubus placed upon her at Versailles, scaled down from six and a-half billions to two billions by the Dawes and Young plans, and now reduced to less than one-tenth by general consent of the victorious Allies. The first official statement of an encouraging nature that has come from Washington follows the reparations settlement. The State departmental officers announce : "The United States will gladly receive any proposals which European debtors of the United States may care to make for reconsideration of the war debts settlement." The terminology is non-committal and there is the further reservation that proposals are to be made individually, and not en bloc. However, the cheering fact is that the sphinx-like face has relaxed and we may anticipate a smile. America's views of war debts and those of the European nations who borrowed, directly or indireetly, from her, do not coincide, and it is certain that whatever Washington does it will make a virtue of it, desiring; even in its generosity, to "lick creation." ,