News of the Week TT may now be taken for
granted that an international conference on reparations will be held as early as possible in the New Year. But as early as possible is not likely to be before January 15th, for when the Basle Committee now discussing Germany's ability to pay, and the bankers' committee considering at Berlin the special question of the frozen credits, have made their reports the several Governments will have to consider them and decide their own policy. That is the more necessary in that the members of neither body are Government representatives. A conference on repar- ations must resolve itself formally, or informally, into a conference on debts, for if Germany's creditors get no reparations they are not likely to pay what they owe one another or the United States. Neither debts nor reparations, moreover, can without deliberate sup- pression of a vital element be discussed apart from tariffs. And the American thesis that disarmament must be a condition of any debt-remission may come knocking hard at the doors. There is every chance, therefore, that the financial conference may still be in session on February 2nd, when the Disarmament Con- Terence is due to open at Geneva. This being so, there is a great deal to be said for the suggestion that questions fundamentally kindred should all be discussed in one conference, not two. The agenda would, in effect, consist of one tremendous item—the re-shaping of the world.
