News of the Week T HE view expressed in last week's
Spectator that Europe as a whole must tell the United States plainly that if reparations payments have to cease, then debt payments must cease too has since been echoed in a number of other journals, among them The Financial News, the Sunday Times, the News-Chronicle and the Manchester Guardian. Public opinion, indeed, has gone far towards adopting the thesis as axiomatic. That is important in - view of three recent developments, the ratification by the United States House of Representatives of the Hoover Moratorium with an explicit proviso that there shall be rio cancellation of debts ; the declaration by the French Prime Minister that France refuses to jettison the mach- inery of the Young Plan ; and the intention attributed to the Young Plan Committee at Basle to recommend a further moratorium of five years (if the British member, Sir Walter Layton, has his way) or two years (if French ideas prevail).
