Accord

At the Quai d'Orsay (French Foreign Office) met the Finance Ministers and representatives of the Allied and Associated Powers.** Their task was to decide how the proceeds from the Experts' Plan are to be paid.

According to the Spa Agreement (June, 1920), division of moneys extracted from Germany was to have been made as follows:

France 52%

Britain 22%

Italy 10%

Belgium 8%

Others (excluding the U. S.) 8%

Along came the U. S., however, to demand payment of $250,000,000 for the cost of maintaining a Rhine Army and $350,000,000 for War damages.

Britain claimed that the U. S. had no legal claim to share in the proceeds of the Experts' Plan, because it had signed a separate peace with Germany. Britain also claimed that the U. S. had not even a claim in equity, because it was not charging property sequestered from Germany against its War claims. The other Allies agreed with the first contention, disagreed with the second.

The U. S. based its strong attitude toward both these charges upon the fact that the Experts' Plan was designed to collect all that is collectable from Germany and that it had specifically reserved in the Treaty of Berlin (separate treaty of peace between the U. S. and Germany) those rights which it would have had had it signed the Treaty of Versailles.

The next most important agendum was the division of reparations so far received, a matter complicated by profits derived from the Ruhr occupation, seizures made, deliveries in kind received, etc.

The net results of a series of private conferences and the preliminary sessions of the main Conference was that an agreement was reached between the U. S. and Britain, whereby the former will receive as payment for the Rhine Army costs about $13,750,000 annually for about 17 years, instead of $20,000,000 for twelve years as settled in the so-called Wadsworth Agreement (TIME, June 18, 1923). On the War damages claim the U. S. was awarded a 2 1/4% share of the total payments which are to stretch over a period of 42 years. As Germany is to pay through the Experts' Plan to the Allies at least $625,000,000 annually, with subsequent increases according to an index of prosperity, the minimum share of the U. S. will amount to $14,062,500 per annum for about 25 years.

Much satisfaction was evinced in Europe over the settlement of the U. S. claims. The U. S., thought Europeans, had become "one of the contracting parties to the Experts' Plan and the general reparations questions."

The Conference continued.

** Representing the U. S.: Ambassador Herrick, Ambassador Kellogg, Colonel James A. Logan (unofficial observer with the Reparations Commission); representing Britain: Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston S. Churchill; France: Finance Minister Etienne Clementel; Belgium: Premier Theunis; Italy: Finance Minister De Stefani. Representatives of Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Yugo-Slavia, Portugal, Greece.