WAR DEBTS.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 February 1921, Page 5

WAR DEBTS.

POSITION OF THE ALLIES, ■ aS •CLEAN SLATES” PROPOSAL, 5? *. AMERICA BLOCKS THE WAY. * i ’> By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright Received Feb. 6, 5.5 p.m. Lon€bn, Feb. 4. Mr. Austen Chamberlain (Chancellor of the Exchequer), speaking at Birmingham. said he would have preferred that at. the end of the war the whole international debt of the Allies and the associated Powers had been wiped out, enabling all to commence with a clean elate. He added that there was no proposal tor the settlement of international debts among the Allies and associated Powers, whether total or partial remission, to which Britain was not prepared to be a party. “We made such proposals,” he said, “but they were not acceptable to America. It would be beneath our dignity to make them again and render our motive liable to misconception. We sought no international advantage for ourselves; we proposed a solution by which we should have forgone larger claims than would have been remitted to us, but we proposed it in the interests of good relations among people’s, and for the restoration of international trade. Our great external debt was due to obligations undertaken on behalf of our Allies.”— Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.