Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1919 — NO EXTENSION ON TIME WILL BE ASKED FOR [ARTICLE]

NO EXTENSION ON TIME WILL BE ASKED FOR

Thursday l$ Time Limit Set By the Allies. CHINESE ENVOYS TO SION .411 of the Counter l*ro|meals -to He Preeentvd by the Germans Are Completed. Paris, Mhy 26. —The president of China has notified the Chinese delegation by cable that a meeting of the Chinese cabinet and the speakers of both houses authorised the delegation to sign the peace treaty with reservations regarding Shantung. The German counter proposals to the allied peace terms will be ready tomorrow night, according to a statement made in French peace conference circles tonight and Count von Brockdorff-Rantsau will present them Wednesday. Representatives of the new states carved out of the former Hapsburg monarchy, were given a hearing today before the reparations com- . mission to present their objections to the proposed solution of the Austro-Hungarian financial problem under which they would be held responsible for their share of the pre-war debt, the war debt, the war issue of currency and reparations would be required to compensate Austria and Hungary as they will be constituted in the future for the value of the public buildings and property inside their limits.

The protests against this great burden were met sympathetically by the council of four, which sent the question to the reparations subcoon mission for a re-hearing. This submission will be supplemented by Franco-British representatives, who are understood to be opposed to any change. The British representatives delegated are 'General Smuts and John M. Keynes and the French are Captain AndYe Tardieu and Louis Loucheur. belief is held here that a new report will be made exempting the new states from any payments on account of reparation or public property taken over. ' The prime factor in the negotiations heretofore has been the fact that about 3,000,000,000 francs of the Austrian pre-war debt is held in France, and the French government has promised to secure re* payments of its nations. Hence it has been anxious to distribute the financial burden, in order to prevent the bankruptcy of the new Austria and Hungary. As the day for the Germans to give answer to the peace demands of the allied and associated governments approaches—and the German plenipotentiaries have announced that they will ask no .further extension of • time beyond Thursday, the limit set by the allies—there apparently has been no change in the sentiment of German government clifcles that the treaty Should not be signed. “Should I, under pressure from out own mislead countrymen, sign this sentence of death?” An utterance attributed to Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, ‘head" of the German peace delegation, in reply to a question as to whether the demands of the Independent socialist that the compact should be duly sealed sums up generally the state of mind supposed to exist in the higher walks of German political life.

Meanwhile allied commissioners are preparing to hand Austria and Bulgaria the treaties that are drawn up for them. The Austrians, who have been for some time at St. Germain, are chafing under the delay in being called before the peace congress. The delay is declared to be mainly due to the settlement of conditions regarding reparations.