The right hon. Gentleman has drawn attention to the remarkable fact that we have not, so far this Session, devoted any portion of our Parliamentary time to a discussion of the important and at one moment very timely topic of Inter-Allied War debts. I agree with him in that reflection, but it is no cause of reproach against His Majesty's Government. We follow naturally in the main the wish of the Opposition parties as to the subjects that should be set down for discussion. I have been ready from the beginning of the Session to deal with this question, and I am ready to do so to-day. Nor do I complain in any way of the tone and temper in which the right hon. Gentleman has couched his searching and critical remarks. He indulged, it is true, in some strictures on friendly foreign countries with which, even in so far as I might in a private capacity have some feelings of agreement, it would be impossible for me to associate myself during my occupation of a position as an official functionary. But I do not find myself in fundamental disagreement on any matter of serious principle with the right hon. Gentleman in many of the arguments he has used. I think, with him, that this question of debts ought to be treated, not in isolated discussion on this or that particular country, but surveyed as a whole. The right hon. Gentleman went back into the past, and I will follow him there.

There has been from the very beginning of these controversies a very marked difference of view in Great Britain and the. United States in regard to War debts. We have never taken the view that the cost of shot and shell fired in the common cause can be considered morally and sentimentally, whatever it may be legally, as on exactly the same footing as ordinary commercial debts. That has always been our position. It was the British position more than 100 years ago, after the Battle of Waterloo, and it is certainly the standpoint from which we first approached this subject. We said we were willing to cancel all debts owing to this country by our Allies, provided we were treated in a similar manner by those who were our creditors. That view did not commend itself to the great Republic across the Atlantic and, as the right hon. Gentleman has very truly said, we received more than one insistent demand to fund our contracted debt. This being so, we were, of course, bound to comply. Whatever views may be entertained on sentiment or on policy, the right of the creditor is indisputable. There can be no question of the lawful right of the creditor, or that the United States are entirely within their full legal rights in taking the view they do of contractual obligations entered into with themselves. We were forced, there- fore, to adopt a position different from that which our own instincts and historical traditions had naturally suggested.

We then come to the Balfour Note, under the administration of my right bon. Friend the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). I was always a sincere believer in the principles of the Balfour Note, and I was very glad to be able, in the first speech I made to this Parliament in my present office, to re-affirm it in the most explicit manner. What are the principles of the Balfour Note?