WAR DEBTS
[To the Editor of TILE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In what comes to me from abroad I find in your pages a nearer appreciation than elsewhere of the importance of what may be called the imponderables in the War Debt situation ; and when you say (December 9th) : " European writers are showing little sagacity in protesting that the Lausanne agreements were made at the instance of the American President," you stress an important fact.
War Debts had no part in Mr. Hoover's defeat, and his vote (nearly seventeen millions) was an intelligent vote. To attack him and thus arouse his devoted followers who recognize that he, whatever his mistakes, never spared himself and never forgot that the reconditioning of the world was part of America's need, is therefore an act of supreme folly calculated to defeat Europe's own ends.
Among these imponderables is the feeling that the American case everywhere has been slighted and, in quarters, virtually suppressed ; and The Spectator and British journals will perform a helpful service if they bring that case before the British reading public, and thus prepare that public to accept without untoward manifestation any agreement that may be reached. Here I mean more than America's present diffi- culties. The history of the money itself, what has been yielded by individual nations already, what is meant by the so-called " French War Debt," the extent to which the War is repre- sented in the budget, what cancellation will mean—all these should be given. England will gain, not lose, by this candid gesture ; for the great need to-day is to undo so far as possible the harm which already has been done.
As for your case its economics have been given, and England's friends will do what can be done, what Englishmen cannot do. Similarly, your Press alone can command the confidence of the British public. There we are helpless. Nor should it be forgotten that an appreciation of England's difficulties and of the way she is meeting them has won her more friends here than have all her economists.
One may well be disturbed by what appears to be an unwil- lingness everywhere to look beyond the immediate day and individual immediate needs. Feeling rules. Intent on proving their own case men refuse to listen ; hence they are always right, the other fellow always wrong. Generalities these, of course, in which anyone can pick holes, but they contain fact ; and a part of the fact may be a refusal to consider in advance the repercussions of what we now do. War Debts, if not dealt with in a large way, with a sufficient measure of popular approval and with an eye on the future, may plague us more after agreement than they do now.
That there will be repercussions here cannot be denied ; nor can any American, sensitive to his environment, fail to see what those repercussions may be, any more than he can fail to see that a Congress, irritated, intransigent, is itself a repercussion. National credit, the sanctity of treaties, the whole frail fabric of peace even, are here involved ; and what will it advantage Europe to win by hook and crook the last penny to-day, if the winning alienate America still further from sympathetic co-operation and provoke a sneer at all international contracts ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
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