"The war debt problem is a hardy growth which blossoms on the front pages of the American press with great regularity twice a year, each mid-June and mid-December. The monotony of its flowering is relieved, however, by slight changes which occur from. time io time. Last year the proposal from the Hungarian Government aye a new twist to war debt discussions, while this year a proposal from the Rumanian Government has had the same effect.
The Hungarian debt proposal made a year ago was, briefly, to pay off in full the principle of the debt, to treat it in other words as a transaction between two friends rather than between two businessmen. The offer aroused great interest because the Hungarian debt had been settled on the same terms as the British debt, and if Congress accepted the Hungarian suggestion a precedent would have been established. Of even greater interest was the fact that the Austrian debt (Austria was then an independent country) had been settled on the terms now suggested by the Hungarian Government. It was moreover not a war debt, but a post-war relief debt consisting of credits for wheat and four then hanging over the American market. Everything was in favour of acceptance, so it appeared. The State Department examined the proposal (some suspected that they had played an even greater part), the Treasury examined it, the President examined it and sent it to Congress—which promptly thrust it in the pigeon-hole'where it has remained ever since, despite the President's suggestion that it should receive "the most careful consideration."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.