Young Plan Protested

INTERNATIONAL

Young Plan Protested

Business must sometimes subordinate itself to Politics. Seven weeks ago John Pierpont Morgan and other international big tycoons finished drafting at Paris the so-called Young Plan, embodying their potent recommendations as to how German Reparations may best be paid through an International Bank of Settle-ment (TIME, March 25, et seq.). Politicians representing Germany and the Creditor Powers must now accept or reject the tycoons' advice. Last week, after a month of spirited bickering among European chancellories, it was decided to hold a "Political Reparations Conference" in mid-August at The Hague. The immaculate, aristocratic capital of Queen Wilhelmina's tidy Netherlands would provide, it was felt, an ideally placid atmosphere. Brussels, although favored in London and Paris as the seat for the conference, was ruled out after strenuous protests were received from Berlin. The Germans claimed that Belgium is "still surcharged with war hatred."

How hard it may prove for the politicians to come to an agreement strikingly appeared last week at London, where the Young Plan was mercilessly flayed by David Lloyd George, balance-of-power man in British politics.

"The Young Report is such an incredible report," said Mr. Lloyd George addressing Parliament, "that I felt I must have missed something when I first read it. I read it a second and a third time, and was confirmed in my feeling of amazement that it should ever have been presented to the British Treasury as a fair settlement of British claims. . . .

"The German annuity is to be divided into conditional and unconditional payments. Practically nothing comes to us out of the unconditional payments.

"Our payments will be vicarious and doubtful. Germany has only been able to pay the Dawes contributions by borrowing on a large scale, simultaneously keeping down wages. You cannot continue the two processes indefinitely. ... I observe that during the two years when it was suggested that we do not receive reparations, there was no suggestion that the United States was not to receive any payment on her debt. This seemed rather a one-sided transaction."

Since the cocky little Welshman often goes off halfcocked, his outburst assumed real importance only when wizened Philip Snowden, Labor's new Chancellor of the Exchequer, observed in his most bilious tones, "I cannot trust myself to say what I think of the way we have been treated .... I agree with Mr. Lloyd George's statements. . . ." Although tacitly admitting that circumstances would probably oblige the empire to stomach the Young Plan, Chancellor Snowden militantly added that at The Hague he would make one paramount demand: The new International Bank of Settlement must be located in London.

Some potent Britons evidently feared last week that Manhattan might get the bank. "Will Wall Street Swallow Europe?" editorialed Viscount Rothermere. publisher of one of the world's largest newspapers. London's Daily Mail. Over his own signature Tycoon Rothermere warned, "Wall Street has become another world power, with more authority than the League of Nations, with more subtlety than Bolshevism."