Mr. Mc Kenna, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer and now Head of the First English Banking Institute, now arguably the most authoritative English financier, has delivered a speech to the Union of American Bankers in New York on reparations and international debt, which has once again brought a glimmer of hope to the world can give.

He said nothing new, nothing that hasn't been asked many times in countless debates over the years.

Because there is nothing new to say about these things: the truth is clear, the experts know it, and the only thing that matters is that the people permeate themselves with this truth, that politicians find the courage and strength draw the consequences from it before Europe has completely collapsed.

This ruin threatens if the international debt resulting from the war, of which the burden of war reparations imposed on Germany is only a part, is not reduced to a level that can be borne and paid for.

Today Germany, France, Italy, and all the smaller ones can pay again.

Because they can only pay either by transferring internationally exploitable capital, and they don't have enough of that, or by exporting goods, and for this they have neither the sufficient possibility of production to the extent still required, nor what is at least as important falls, the sufficient possibilities of paragraph.

So you have to cancel, reduce, you have to grant deadlines for internal recovery, you have to help the debtors themselves to such recovery first.

Will Europe perish completely?

That's ancient truth.

But it is in truth.

And that a man of M. Kenna's authority should now speak it with such urgency is a gain and a hope.

The Brussels conference, at which the entire problem of international debt, including German reparations, is to be put up for debate, is imminent.

If politics doesn't thwart the plan again, it should be held before the end of this year.

And despite everything we have experienced, we must not lose heart that this Brussels conference, unlike the first, will bring about a turning point, that if it does not complete a solution, it will at least initiate it.

After all, at some point it has to decide whether Europe should perish completely or whether it should still find its way to salvation.

And there is no longer much time to lose for such a decision.

For Germany, however, the issue today is not the Brussels conference, namely what Germany can do to save itself before the Brussels conference.

The danger that threatens us these months is enormous.

Perhaps our greatest danger, however, is fatalism, which is capturing more and more layers of society and especially those who are called to lead, the desperate - and at the same time so comfortable and excuses any inactivity!

- Believe that we can do nothing of our own accord, that our destiny is entirely in the hands of the victors,