A MAMMOTH DEBT.

Taihape Daily Times, 14 August 1919, Page 5

A MAMMOTH DEBT.

CAN BRITAIN PAY AMERICA? Four thousand million pounds is the sum that experts say we owe to the United States in national and trade debts, minus, of course, the large sum owed to up in the form of farm and other mortgages, writes “M.” in the “Daily Ma/l.”

It is so much that every grown man would have to contribute a pound a week for nearly eight years to pay it off. Which could not be done, especially, if the trade part of the debt kept increasing each day as it does now. It has to be paid somehow. How? The Government, part of the debt will be paid with money which the Government collects in taxes from individuals and firms. The individuals and firms have to make it in business. If the total money in use in business is not increased by new money made in foreign trade, but stays about the same—just goes round and round from person to person, to shop, to trader, to manufacturer, to worker, and so on—then the collection by the Government of this money with which to • pay the debt would slowly bleed cur businesses to death

That means that we simply must not in any circumstances allow the Government to collect in taxes for expenditure abroad (if the Government spends it all at home the country as a whole may be just as well off) more than the new money that is being brought in from abroad by our trad-

In other words, to repay the American debt we must make at least £4,000.000,000 abroad, for the same reasoning applies to the purely trade debt that applies to the Government debt. Where shall we get it? We might make that much profit by trading with China, India, and Rus-. ?ia, then bring it “bonier pay part of it in the form of taxes to the Government, so lhat the Government part ofthej debt could be repaid, and use the : remainder to pay off trade debts with America. But that means waste in- carrying the money about so much. It is complicated. It is not a direct way of paying the debt. It is not so direct and satisfying, for example, as letting the Americans pay our debt for us with their own money

The strange thing, at a first glance, i? that America really wants to pay off our debt with her own money. Secretary Rodfield, of the United States Department of Commerce, is conductirg an official Government propaganda to persuade Americans to buy British goods. Supported by bankers, journalists, and chamber of commerce experts, he : > telling the people, and particularly he business man, that America must enable Britain to pay her debts in the easiest and simplest way in order ro disturb international conditions as little as possible. So the way in which America can pay our debt for us .is simply this: We must £ oil £4,000,000,000 worth, of goods to the people of the United States which they will pay for in dollars with their own money; and then, instead of bringing those dollars to Great Britain, - we. must leave them there to be used in paying off our debt.

Our foreign banking and exchange system will make possible the fair and effective use of those dollars > The process cm be spread out over as many years as is convenient, but the (pucker >t is applied the better. If British traders and British manufacturers act quickly the thing is done. Up to the present they have been far too timid, not showing a tenth of the energy in entering American markets that the Americans have shown in coming here. They have used many excuses—American tariffs, press' re of demand in other countries, the antipathy of Americans. But the fact is that not one British firm in a hundred has really tried, by studying the American market year after year arid making sensible efforts. The few chat have gone at it sensibly have succeeded—look at the way “Lux” is doing business in th e United States. English clina has done very well in the past The Irish linen makers are uniting in a £90,000 American campaign.

But think of the scores of otherwasted opportunities. Why, even orange marmalade, a product that America has always thought of as typically British, is being boomed in the United States by an American firm! Now—not next year, but now, while America is ready and eager to help is the time for British business men of all kinds to go ahead vigorously and intelligently in this campaign. There is a genuine craze in nearly nil parts of the United States to-day fd British things. The man with London clothes, the woman with ah English < r Scottish country walking suit, and c. eryone with anything that he can proudly point to as being Bluish—they are all “in the swim’ to -day, and they arc going to stay there in-

d finitely it" our manufacturers act vigorously and promptly. Will they? Will they strike off that £4,000,000,000 for us and leave. thQ profits from Russia ,China, and India Tor the true enrichment and improve*) ment of Great Britain.