The Daily News. MONDAY, MARCH 14, 1921. THE ALLIES’ ECONOMIC LEVER.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 March 1921, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, MARCH 14, 1921. THE ALLIES’ ECONOMIC LEVER.

The measures which the Allies decided to adopt, ill the event of Germany failing to accept the Paris decisions, leaves no room for doubt as to their firm determination to proceed without loss of time to collect for themselves the amount fixed for the reparations indemnity to be paid by the Germans. Thesd measures consist of two systems, one being the establishment of a line of customs houses on the Rhine, at which will be gathered levies on imports and exports on the basis of the German tariff, and involving the occupation of DliWberg, Ruhrort and Dusseldorf, the. other being by means of what is termed “Allies’ sanctions, V the effect of which will be that half the value of all goods sold by Germans to people in tiie Allied countries will have to be handled by the purchasers to the respective Governments of such Allied countries, and received by them as payments on account of , reparations, and its application should bring home to the German people more convincingly than any plan yet conceived, that at. last they have to pay the piper and make sacrifices which they have striven hard to avoid. In explaining the working of this economic lever to the House of Commons, Mr. Lloyd George invested the proposal with a due sense of its practicability, to which he added a lightness of tbuch that emphasised the fallen value of German currency. The Governments in each of. the Allied countries are to obtain Parliamentary sanction to exercise this compulsory proposal, and the British Dominions, which are just, as much interested in the indemnity as is the Mother Country, only to a ■smaller extent, will be asked to in the same direction, and it, will be to their advantage to do soy especially as each country, will get paid in its own currency, and the Germans in theirs. Jn effect, one half of the value of German trade with countries that were allied against Germany in the war will be devoted to tiie payment of tiie indemnity, and the simplicity of the arrangement is assuredly as satisfactory as its beneficial effect. Meanwhile the customs duties will still be collected, and the pressure of these two economic levers should appreciably affect German ideas as to the urgent necessity for increasing taxation in order to reduce the debt to the Allies as speedily as possible; also to abstain from fomenting, as well as rigorously suppressing, all outdiMi’d.gt .or .hcittUß ami-

festations against the Allies. No paper agreement made by Germany can have more than its face value, so that nothing but definite action, by the Allies on the lines proposed will achieve the desired end. If they so please, the Germans may tear up the Versailles Treaty, and the Paris terms, but both will still hold good as far as the Allies are concerned. Nothing but force is respected by the Germans, so that the measures decided on by/ the Allies must be regarded as the only possible means for obtaining payment of the indemnity. It is not a question of military* fores, but the application of economic pressure, so that all countries, including the Dominions, interested in the proceeds of the indemnity, should welcome the proposals, and have no hesitation in consenting thereto. How much, if any, trade with Germany is to eventuate is a matter for the people of the Allied countries to decide, but the retention of one half the German goods by the countries purchasing the same, may be a factor in the matter. That, however, is a mere detail. The point that is of real importance is that the Allies have played the trump card and gained the odd trick—an advantage that should prove far-reaching.