Neue Freie Presse
- The Conditions for Solving the Debt Question.
- Agreement on the Disarmament Question Imminent.
- Murder of a French Family by Bulgarian Robbers.
The Neue Freie Presse of 28 October 1926 ran high finance, disarmament diplomacy and Balkan crime side by side. In a signed column, the French politician Louis Loucheur argued that France could not sign a debt agreement drawn up without regard to its real situation and its capacity to pay. He also described a dream in which U.S. Treasury Secretary Mellon became a naturalized Frenchman and finance minister, and then despaired over the transfer problem. A correspondent's telegram reported that the Conference of Ambassadors would probably not make a new démarche to Berlin over disarmament, and that General Walch of the Inter-Allied Control Commission would be called to Paris for new instructions. A second telegram reported that bandits near Svilengrad had killed the French engineer Pierre Bermond, his wife and his son, seriously injured their coachman and fled with their belongings.
Translation
The Conditions for Solving the Debt Question.
but France cannot possibly sign an agreement that has been drawn up without regard to the actual situation in which this country finds itself and without regard to its capacity to pay. Allow me to tell you about a quite curious dream. I dreamed that the American Secretary of the Treasury, Mellon, had been naturalized in France and had become Minister of Finance. I saw quite clearly how Mellon, his head propped on his hands, agonized over the transfer problem without being able to find a solution.
Agreement on the Disarmament Question Imminent.
It is reported that there will probably be no new démarche by the Conference of Ambassadors to the German government on the disarmament question. It is said that the chairman of the Inter-Allied Control Commission in Berlin, General Walch, will shortly be summoned to Paris to receive new instructions for the continuation of the negotiations. In informed circles
Murder of a French Family by Bulgarian Robbers.
In the district of Svilengrad, near the [?] Greek–Turkish border, a band of robbers attacked the French engineer Pierre Bermond and killed him as well as his wife and his son. The coachman of the carriage in which Bermond was travelling with his family was seriously injured. The robber band then plundered the contents of the carriage and fled.
Context
Who was Louis Loucheur, the author of the debt column?
The column on the debt question carries the byline of Louis Loucheur, and its argument comes from a man who had run French war production and post-war economic policy himself. Loucheur came from the arms industry and became Minister of Armaments in September 1917. At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference he was Georges Clemenceau's principal economic adviser, so he had sat at the table where the post-war financial order was negotiated. He also served as Minister of Finance in Aristide Briand's government in 1925 and 1926. That background gives his 'curious dream' its point: a former French finance minister puts the American Treasury Secretary in his old chair and has him find out that the transfer problem has no solution. In the excerpt Loucheur states his conclusion directly: France cannot sign an agreement drawn up without regard to its actual situation and its capacity to pay.
What was the Mellon–Bérenger agreement, and why did 'capacity to pay' matter?
The agreement Loucheur objects to is most likely the Mellon–Bérenger accord of 29 April 1926, which fixed the amount and rate of repayment of France's war debt to the United States. It was negotiated with Andrew W. Mellon, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, and signed by the French ambassador Henry Bérenger, subject to ratification by the French parliament. The accord greatly reduced what France owed and set relatively easy terms, and the American Debt Commission declared that it 'represents substantially France's capacity to pay' — exactly the judgment Loucheur's column disputes. France's arrangement with Britain linked payments to German reparations to France; the French wanted a similar clause in the American agreement, but the United States would not accept the linkage. The reaction in France was hostile: 20,000 war veterans demonstrated in Paris against the agreement, and ratification by the French parliament was delayed until July 1929. When this column appeared in October 1926, therefore, the accord had been signed but not ratified.
Why did the transfer problem weigh so heavily on the debt debate?
In his dream Loucheur pictures Mellon agonizing over the transfer problem — how such sums could actually be moved from one country to another. The flow of money in the mid-1920s explains why the question was pressing. The Dawes Plan of 1924 set a schedule for German reparations, and by establishing confidence it made it possible for Germany to borrow from the United States at reasonable rates and use the money to pay Britain and France. They in turn used the reparations to repay their debts to the United States, in what John Maynard Keynes called a great 'circular flow of money'. Washington also used credit as leverage: it quietly prevented private or public loans to France as long as the debt question remained unsettled, which put pressure on the franc. Seen from Paris, the American refusal to tie debt payments to reparations meant that France would have to keep paying even if the German part of this circle stopped. Loucheur's column turns that worry into a joke at Mellon's expense.
What was the Inter-Allied Control Commission that General Walch headed, and when did it end?
The disarmament report concerns the Allied body that supervised Germany's compliance with the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. Commissions of this kind were entitled, among other things, to receive information on the location of munitions stocks and depots and on the armament of fortified works, fortresses and forts. The treaty limited the German army to 100,000 men, only 4,000 of whom could be officers. Hans von Seeckt, who had commanded the army since 1920 and had undertaken programs to get around these limitations, resigned in October 1926, only weeks before this report. The paper's correspondent says that no new démarche by the Conference of Ambassadors to Berlin was expected and that General Walch, chairman of the commission in Berlin, would be called to Paris for new instructions. The commission ceased to function in Germany on 28 February 1927, followed by Hungary on 31 March and Bulgaria on 1 June. On-site Allied control in Germany thus ended about four months after the 'imminent agreement' announced in this headline.
Where is Svilengrad, and why was it such a sensitive frontier district?
The murder report places the attack in the district of Svilengrad, which the telegram describes as near the Greek–Turkish border. Svilengrad lies in south-central Bulgaria at the tripoint of Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece; today the town is about 2 km north of the Greek border and 14 km northwest of the Turkish border. It was a recent addition to Bulgaria: the town was ceded to Bulgaria in 1912 after the First Balkan War, and during the Second Balkan War, in the summer of 1913, it was ruined and burned house by house. According to the paper's correspondent, it was in this recently acquired borderland that a gang attacked the carriage of the French engineer Pierre Bermond, killed him, his wife and his son, seriously injured the coachman and made off with the contents of the carriage.
Original
Die Bedingungen für die Lösung der Schuldenfrage.
aber Frankreich kann unmöglich ein Abkommen unterzeichnen, das ohne Rücksicht auf die tatsächliche Lage, in der sich dieses Land befindet, und ohne Rücksicht auf seine Zahlungsfähigkeit abgefaßt worden ist. Gestatten Sie, daß ich Ihnen einen ganz kuriosen Traum erzähle. Mir träumte, der amerikanische Schatzsekretär Mellon wäre in Frankreich naturalisiert und Finanzminister geworden. Ich sah ganz deutlich, Mellon, den Kopf auf die Hände gestützt, sich mit dem Transferproblem abquälen, ohne eine Lösung finden zu können.
Bevorstehende Einigung in der Entwaffnungsfrage.
Wie verlautet, dürfte es zu keiner neuen Demarche der Botschafterkonferenz bei der deutschen Regierung in der Entwaffnungsfrage kommen. Es heißt, daß der Vorsitzende der Interalliierten Ueberwachungskommission in Berlin, General Walch, demnächst nach Paris berufen werden wird, um neue Instruktionen für die Weiterführung der Verhandlungen entgegenzunehmen. In unterrichteten Kreisen
Ermordung einer französischen *amilie durch bulgarische Räuber.
Auf dem Gebiet von Swilengrad, nahe der [?] riechisch-türkischen Grenze, überfiel eine Räuberbande den französischen Ingenieur Pierre Bermond und tötete ihn sowie seine Gattin und seinen Sohn. Der Kutscher des Wagens, in dem Bermond mit seiner Familie fuhr, wurde schwer verletzt Die Räuberbande plünderte dann den Wageninhalt und entfloh.