NO REPUDIATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 653, 3 May 1929, Page 1

NO REPUDIATION

Lords and Balfour Note

BIRKENHEAD DEFENDS PRINCIPLE Labour Attack on Debt Arrangements British Official Wireless Received 11.5 a.m. RUGBY, Thursday. 3N the House of Lords, the Karl of Birkenhead (Conservative) called attention to the subject of tear debts and moved: “That this House approves the principle of the Balfour memorandum.” He said he had reached the conclusion that the measures which were related to his motion required very earnest consideration from the British Parliament and from the Parliamentary assemblies of other countries.

In the Balfour Memorandum, which was acclaimed as a masterly State document by every Liberal and Conservative member of the Coalition Cabinet, a gesture was made for the cancellation of war debts. It was said that as a result of the war £2,000,000,000 was owing to us from our late Allies, while our debt to the United States was roughly some £900,000,000. Those figures required very considerable revision. When one talked of £2,000,000,000, it must be remembered that one-third of that sum was owing to us from Russia. That nation had repudiated completely that debt. Defending the Chancellor’s conduct of the financial negotiations with France and Italy. Lord Birkenhead declared that Mr. Winston Churchill had made the best terms conceivably obtainable. It was the object of all of us to make a generous debt settlement, and at the same time the measure of the concessions which we could make was limited by the reasonable economic and financial resources of the nations with whom we were dealing. France had emerged from many difficulties which pressed upon her when our negotiations with her reached a decisive stage, and it might be that were such negotiations to be resumed to-day some slightly better terms might be obtained. COULD NOT ASK MORE “Take the case of Italy. She is a country, which, though politically of the greatest possible consequence in Europe, is economically not rich, and there are well understood limits, recognised by all authorities on international finance, to the contributions which Italy could make. No one who dispassionately considered the position of Italy could have thought it proper to have asked more of Italy than we did.’’ Lord Birkenhead agreed that we had paid and were paying the United States on a scale which the late Mr. Bonar Law had hardly exaggerated in describing as a scale which would affect our standards of living for a generation; but we had some compensations. There was hardly anyone who believed in the year 1918 that British finance could retain for London control of the finance of the world. Never could that result have been attained unless a golden and indispensible asset in British credit had been retained. “If settlement with the United States had not taken place, our national supremacy would have passed elsewhere. Broken as we had been by war, we are still to-day the financial centre of the world.

"Let them consider how far the Balfour Memorandum contributed to it. It made a twofold contribution. One was material; more important was the moral one. We said to the whole world just as a business proposition, that if our creditors would forgive us our debts, though those who owed us money were far more numerous than those to whom we owed money, we would wipe out the whole account. A more generous offer had never been made by any country in the history of the world.’’ MR. SNOWDENS ATTACK Lord Birkenhead referred to the attack recently made upon the Balfour Memorandum by Mr. Philip Snowden, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government. He also referred to the terms of the amendment to his motion, which was to be proposed by Lord Parmoor on behalf of the Labour Party. He noted that Lord Parmoor's amendment approved the principle of the Balfour Memorandum, while regretting that the settlement made by the Conservative Government imposed unfair burdens upon the British taxpayers. He asked Lord Parmoor to say that it was not the purpose of the Labour Party to attempt to impair the authority of the Balfour Memorandum, upon which depended every financial arrangement which had since been made in Europe. To repudiate the memorandum would inflict a grievous and irreparable wound upon the reputation of this country. He himself had deep responsibility for the memorandum. He was a member of the Cabinet which adopted it, and he would regard the time when this momentous financial decision was taken as one of the supreme moments of his public life. Lord Parmoor, in moving the amendment, said the Labour Party had consistently adopted and followed what it regarded as the leading principle of the Balfour Note. The Earl of Birkenhead asked Lord Parmoor if he associated himself with the epithet “infamous,” applied by Mr. Snowden to the Balfour Note. Lord Parmoor replied that quite frankly he did not like It. Lord Parmoor proceeded to criticise certain aspects of the debt settlements. The Marquis of Salisbury congratulated Lord Parmoor upon having dissociated himself from the word “repudiation” and the word “infamous,” which figured in Mr. Snowden’s observations on the Balfour Note. Lord Parmoor’s amendment was rejected by 89 votes to six, and Lord Birkenhead’s motion was agreed to.