462.00 R 29/1893: Telegram
The Ambassador in Great Britain (Harvey) to the Secretary of State
[Received August 4—2:20 p.m.]
338. Features of yesterday’s debate in Commons on reparations and Balfour’s note were an attack by Asquith on the Government’s policy, a defense by the Prime Minister and a comprehensive statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the reparations question, the moratorium request, conditions in Germany and inter-Allied indebtedness. The disposition appears to be constantly to consider favorably the contents of the note as a plain statement of fact, though its form was unfortunate, and general opinion here among business interests and newspaper comment whole-heartedly supports the Government’s reparation program. In the course of his statement, which is praised by all but Labor organs, Home said:
“I wish to make it clear beyond all possibility of misapprehension that we realize and recognize to the full our obligations to pay our debt to the United States of America. We do not mean to evade that obligation and we are sending a delegation to America this autumn for the express purpose of discussing the arrangements which have been made for the funding of our debt. In fact the whole foundation of the note which has been issued by the Acting Foreign Secretary, is the obligation of payment of our debt to the United States.”
After a comparison of the debts of Great Britain, France and the United States and indebtedness per head of population he closed his speech as follows:
“In the circumstances it is impossible to ask the British taxpayer alone to shoulder the burden of the payment of our war debts. Whatever our wishes in other circumstances might have been we have got to face facts and adjust ourselves to realities. We must turn our backs upon things which perhaps all the world was waiting for, reflecting that if only it had been possible that the nations who fought in the war side by side, who shared the same privations, faced the same trials, endured the same agonies and the same losses, had been willing to regard their subscriptions to cost of the war as contributions to our common success we might have been able to rid the world of many occasions of irritation and plant in the heart of humanity a new and inspiring hope.”