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Show FRANCE WANTS TO PAYAMEeiGA TARDIEU COMPLAINS THAT UNIT. ED STATES IS MORE EXACTING IN DEMANDS THAN ENGLAND Debt Will Be Paid In Full If Time Is Only Given; Common People, It la Declared, Want Consideration In Time of Stress Tarls. France wants to rind will pay her debts to the United States. We ask only that we be giveu proper time. Under the Versailles trenty, Frnnce is Germany's creditor to the extent of $17,000,000,000, which represents about half the damages she suffered. Franco has expected America to give effectlvo help In collecting this sum, which Is vnBtly more than the $3,000,000,000 she owes America. This help has foiled us. I hav never nev-er blnmed America's policy, but unquestionably un-questionably Its result hs been to encourage en-courage Germnny not to pay. Since the arms conference, we have paid out 30,000,000,000 francs advance on repnr-ntlons repnr-ntlons nnd in pensions. During the same period Germnny has been forced to pay but 0,000,000,000 gold marks, of which Belgium got 2,500,000,000, and France should have received 52 per cent of the remainder. But the occupation occu-pation expenses had to be reduced. In such circumstances when debts are mentioned we do not say we will not pay that is Loucheur's phrase but we say we will pay, but are in a delicate situation, which warrants giving giv-ing us some consideration. Who will say we are wrong? Let me recall here that it was I who negotiated the debts contracted by France in America from 1017 to 1010. When the money was lent no date for repayment wns fixed, because it was recognized the future could not be known with cerainty. However, everybody nt that tjme said that, and believed, Germany, when conquered,, would be obliged to pay. But the contrary is the case. Germany Ger-many has paid hardly anything yet, and at such a moment the American congress votes a law fixing tire dates and conditions for final, payment. England has been less exacting. I would 'be lacking in my customary frankness in these cables, if I did not remark that for such n notification the true was ill-chosen. Such, at any rate, has been the com-mon com-mon man's impression in France, lie has s id, "It was not necessary." She has never said "We will not pay." He has said "We lime not been helped to collect what is due us, but they hasten to demand that which we owe." That is my country's true sentiment, and you Americans must understand it as It is, for there is nothing which threatens threa-tens your interests or your sentiments. With our 330,000,000 francs' debt with 80,000,000,000 already spent in Germany's place leaving 50,000,000, 000 remaining to be spent in the same direction we are entitled to be treated treat-ed with a certain consideration by om friends. This consideration Is all that we as'; and all that we will tako. |