The Waterbury Democrat., 1931-06-30
NEA Service Writer

l NEA SerylCe WFlter
 | Washington.-The prime reason hind the Hoover proposal to suspend international debt payments for a year seems to have been that every one was becoming badly scared. Scared enough. at least, to throw | off any isolationist inhibitions and forget for awhile our traditional of- ficial theory that war debts had no connection whatever with repara- tions. And if you were president and were scared nobody could cry shame on you, because you would be in company with the worlds most im- portant statesmen, bankers and in- dustrialists.
 Spectre of Communism
 The last few weeks go such peo- i pie thinking about what might hap pen if Germany collapsed. How much of the rest of Europe would be car- | ried down in such a financial and economic crash. The bogies of war and communism both raised their heads. Enormous American foreign | investments and still very impor- tant volume of American trade were involved. A domestic depression of long standing tied in closely with the world wide slump. theratened to become far worse and last much longer. Even the next presidential election in this country seemed like ly to hang on what happened to Ger many.
 The American, British and Ger man governments worked the sus- pension scheme out by themselves, but it doesn't quite appear that this marks the beginning of millennium in which statesmen will unite to solve world problems. The arrange ment does, however, present the spectacle of a bucket brigade hastily organized to quench an arsenal fire. Gcrmany's Position
 Agreement is nearly unanimous that Germany had found herself in a position where she could no long CT pay her separations and with in- ternal conditions, economic and po- litical, rapidly becoming more threat ening. Our own war debtors would not continue their debt payments when deprived of the reparations re- ceipts. At best the effects would have approached the disastrous If all hands had demanded their own moratoriums and President Hoover and Secretary Mellon came to ac- cept the view that the safest method would be a proposal by this coun- try. The speed of the final nego- tiations, the nasty conferences with members of Congress and the special Saturday night press conference at which the Hoover announcement was given to the world indicate the seri- ous urgency with which the adminis- tration viewed the problem.
 | Possibilities of political as well as financial upheavals gave all the nations involved a great deal of concern. Sir Montagu Norman. gov ernor of the Ban kof England, is said to have told the directors of the International Bank of Settle ments recently that the whole capi- talist system was likely to collapse
 within six months. Norman's con- versations with Secretary of the Treasury Mellon in England are SUD- posed to have been the final factor in the negotiations and developments which so quickly afterward produced the Hoover plan.
 Threat of Revolution
 | Unemployment has been hitting Germany so hard that the rapid growth of fascist and communist
 groups in the republic had long
 been regarded as a matter of inter- national concern. Revolution was
 regarded as a real threat and in
 many quarters as quite inevitable
 unless a moratorium or something
 as effective were applied. States.
 men shivered. regardless of whether