“GERMANY CAN PAY.”

Taranaki Daily News, 12 October 1922, Page 7

“GERMANY CAN PAY.”

FRENCHMEN ON INJUSTICE. Germany can pay if she wants to, says M. Stephane Lauzanne in the National Review. She can pay if she raises her taxes to the equivalent of those with which French and British taxpayers are burdened. In France the i tax per capita is £9 12s, in Germany nly £2 13s fid. In France sugar is taxed at 50 francs the hundred kilos, in Germany at 14 marks. A journey of 60 miles by rail costs in France 5s 6d. and in Germany only 2s 2d. In the 75 rears allowed, Germany can pay France 3400 million pounds sterling owing to France in damages, but she prefers to go bankrupt. The world, according to M. Lauzanne, looks on and says nothin?. It even pities Germany for her wilful misery, and blames France as the cause. • France, ruined, sacked, and broken, has, since the Armistice, paid more than one thousand million pounds sterling to rebuild her ruins, while Germany has not even paid half. Vet, in the eyes of the world, it is France that is’ lazy and srreedy, while Germany is considered as having an impossible task, and as being bled white. To show the patience of France, reference is made to the Franco-German War. to the indemnity of £200,000.000 paid by France, and to enterprise by France as “the banker of the world.” It is added that one can understand a Swiss writer saying: “France is, after all. a good nation: France is a. splendid milch cow.” “But.” says M. Lauzanne, “there are milch cows which, after standing a great deal of abuse, suddenly go mad. And the best nations in the world become bad when they are forced to submit to treatment that is both immoral and unjust.”