German reparation offer rejected by Britain and Italy
Berlin, 16 May 1923 - The British and Italian governments have rejected a German reparations offer and insisted that a much more serious contribution is required.
The German offer was valued at 30 billion gold marks to be raised by a Bond issue at normal rate on the international money market, It was also to be paid over time. The German government believes that it has reached the limit of its economic capacity with this offer, but this is not how it has been interpreted by others.
In a written reply handed to the German Ambassador in London on the 13th of May, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Lord Curzon expressed great disappointment at the offer of a payment that fell far below what he considered to be the moderate amount proposed by Britain at the Paris Conference in January.
Lord Curzon was no more impressed by the methods that Germany had proposed to pay such amounts, the reliance on a series of international loans meaning that they must be largely speculative. Instead of receiving ‘concrete and substantial proposals’, Lord Curzon said, the Allied Governments were ‘confronted with vague assurances and references to future negotiations, which, in a business transaction of this kind, are lacking in practical value.’
Lord Curzon (Image: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs)
The Italian government has levelled similar criticisms at a proposal it considers to be unpractical and was devised to frustrate a resolution of the reparations issue.
The French newspaper, the Temps, has characterised the German offer as a ‘fraud’ that would endanger that which was owed to France and Belgium and urges its government to ‘exploit the Ruhr’
The Daily News in Britain struck a similar downbeat assessment. ‘It cannot be’, it reports ‘that the long-expected German Note goes beyond the hopes of those who in this country have been working for the restoration of stability in Europe’ but it also suggests that it is an offer that Britain and Italy could accept but France could not.
Earlier this year, French and Belgian troops invaded the industrial Ruhr region after Germany failed to meet its reparations responsibilities. For instance, the French are currently occupying the massive Baden Aniline, the Soda Works and the Holchist Dye Works which boast a combined workforce of 15,000. Its purpose for this occupation, according to Reuters, is the confiscation of chemicals and dye-stuffs it claims should have been transferred under the Treaty of Versailles.
Since the rejection of the German proposal the political mood in Berlin is, a Reuter’s cablegram reports, one of ‘dejection.’
British Pathé footage of the Free State’s new Customs checks in operation
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
