The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-07-10
HOW AMERICA CAN
 INVEST S1O,000,
By W. V. M. ROBERTSON President the Alabama Home Mort
 gage Company


 Does America desire to maintain her position as a leader of nations, carrying aloft a white banner, sig niflcant of her high resolve to work for foftier form of civilization than mankind has ever known, or shall she continue within the law" and be dragged down by the unwholesome forces which now threaten the world?
 About the time of the armistice many of the statesmen in supreme power proclaimed that the world would soon witness a higher form of justice and that happiness would no longer be just a dream, but that it would at last be. real.
 Vain dreamers they were, for there was a cloud rising upon the horizon which they saw not. cloud that was to shut out the light of their ideals and in the darkness rock the finan- cial equilibrium of the world.
 America has reached the cross roads of destiny, for so vitally inter- linked has international trade be come that bankrupt Europe affects every home in America. We can see the sign of coming disaster in the form of unemployment and stagna- tion of industry in every state in the union In land of plenty we hear of misery on every side. Time was when cotton which sold for only cents pound lay rotting in the southern fields, and when corn, with no foreign consumer able to buy, was used as fuel in the northwest. Are we to stand idly by and allow dis- asters like this to come upon us again?
 Lord Macaulay has well said that because two diplomats were quarrel ing in the Palace of Versailles, saw ages were cutting each others throats In North America. The na- tions of Europe cannot buy our goods when, by our wilful action, we are depreciating their currency to point where it is almost worthless.
 Instead of waiting 25 years Tor normal times to come again it Is pos sible for us to show the true spirit upon which the American natlon was founded by doing simple act oi justice which will cause almost TIT stant transformation in the pusihess relations of the world and bring ray of hope to despairing millions
 For more than 40 years before the World war began the growing ana threatening military preparations or Germany were a constant threat to inc safety of all nations. It was inst as much duty and liability on America to help destroy that power as it was of England, France, ltaly and the other nations.
 Had these United States declared war in July, 1914, when the war pe gan, our war cost would have been al least s75,OO0. 0O0 900. instead of the s25, 900, GOO, 900 1t was. While tnsy were pouring out their blood on tne battlefield in a cause that was Justiy ours, they were pouring out theT gold to us in payment of the very materials with which to fight Tor us America has not paid her just snare of the cost of the World war and un- til she does so she is to pay trignt- ful price In the form of business dS- pression. unemployment and loss or world prestige.
 This tremendous sum which they paid America has upset the financial eouilibrium of the world, as we can so clearly see in the depreciated cur rency ofeall nations.
 Europe owes us s10,00o, 100000. The l $500, 000, 900 interest to come to us | in a golden stream will act as de- structively on our foreign commerce as would stream of lava from an loverflowing volcano on the crops of a fertile country, destroying those crops and making barren the soil. l And now the question comes. What are we to do about 1t? AS an act not only of simple justice but of kealthy world conditions, we can use the st0.000. 100000 war debt due us from Europe to wipe out the $20.0o0- GOO, 900 or o3o, 900, 900, 900 war debt due from nation to nation in Europe, and thus hasten the day of recons'ruc- ton and pre-war progress by 26