DEBT TO AMERICA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 July 1938, Page 5

DEBT TO AMERICA

THORNY & UNSETTLED QUESTION NOT CLOSED AND FINISHED DISCUSSION IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS RUGBY, July 21. In a debate on the Finance Bill in the House of Lords today, Lord Stanhope, President of the Board of Educacation, replying for the Government, took up reference to the British debt to the United States made by Viscount Samuel. He said it was a subject on which it was easy to say something which might possibly be misunderstood and which perhaps might be such as make the question even more difficult in the future than it had been in the past. He agreed with Lord Samuel that the debt'question did remain very much a thorn in the sides of the two great and friendly peoples. It had led to unfortunate feeling and on occasions to unfortunate speeches. He could only say that, so far as the Government was concerned, the question had never become one which was closed and finished, but was very much the opposite way. He contradicted the suggestions sometimes made that Britain had failed to recognise the great importance of this question and that the debt had been repudiated. Such suggestions, he said, were entirely unfounded. He reminded the-House that the debts due to Britain were very considerably greater than the debt Britain owed to the United States. He assured the House that the statement at the end of the communication which passed from Britain to the United States each year on the subject of the debt was by no means an empty form of words. It was one which left the question open until the moment when the Government thought it possible to arrive at a conclusion satisfactory to both countries.