The Allied Ministers, headed by Mr. Lloyd George and M.
Briand, met the German delegates at Lancaster House on Tuesday to receive the German reply to the reparation terms Proposed at the Paris Conference. Dr. Simons, the German Foreign Minister, rejected the Paris terms. He said that if Germany had to pay £3110,000,000 a year after eleven years, her exports would have to be worth £1,200,000,000—an impossibly high figure. Germany objected to paying annuities for 42 years, and wished to fix the total capital sum due. On the assumption that she was to retain Upper Silesia., what- ever the result of the plebiscite, Germany proposed to discount at 8 per cent. the annuities fixed at Paris, thus reducing the total of £11,300,000,000 to a present value of £2,500,000,000. Germany argued that of this she had already paid, in money or in kind, £1,000,000,000. She would pay interest on a loan of £400,000,000, to be raised at once. On the balance of £1,100,000,000 she would pay interest. Of this balance she could not pay more than £50,000,000 a year, partly in labour or in kind, for the next five years. In 1926 she would propose a scheme for paying off the remaining £850,000,000 in 30 years. She would not pay the proposed export duty.
