We on these benches desire to associate ourselves with what has already been said in congratulation to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the settlement which has been reached, and also in expressing our deep appreciation of the action of the President of the United States in acceding to an arrangement which is a profound relief to all of us. There were in this matter three factors which have been almost equally predominant from the beginning the first a sense, deeply felt in this House and throughout the country, of the extreme unfairness of the financial situation in which this country was left at the failure of all our debtors to pay their debts and the requirement from our creditors that the whole of our debts should be paid in full. If the House has said little on this matter hitherto it was not because feeling was not deep, but because we felt that Debate would not be helpful and that representations would not assist the ultimate settlement of these delicate negotiations. Equally, at the same time, all of us felt that if it could by any possibility be avoided there ought to be no interference with the full friendliness and cordiality of Anglo-American relations—cordiality and friendliness which must always be the very foundation stone of our policy. Particularly is that cordiality and friendship essential in these days, when both the Disarmament Conference and the World Economic Conference are in session.

Thirdly, I think there is among the Members of this House a feeling that it would have been a most lamentable thing if we had been forced into a position of repudiation. We have a very strong feeling of the obligation that rests upon this country to fulfil its bond. That an Englishman's word is his bond has always been a most proud maxim in this country, and definitely to have repudiated a financial obligation at a moment when we told other countries of the importance of maintaining the sacredness of their undertakings, would have been a course which would have been a matter of profound regret. It is, therefore, an extreme relief to all of us that these various factors have been reconciled, that there is no repudiation, that Anglo-American friendship is fully maintained, and that at the same time the onerous financial burden upon us is to be relieved. If at one and the same time we can congratulate those to whom speech in this House is always silvern and can relieve the Indian Government of the accumulations of silver which clog their Treasury, and pay our debt to America in a coinage which is welcomed there by the advocates of the remonetisation of silver, then indeed the climax is put on the satisfactory end of those arrangements. The whole House would wish to join in congratulating the Government, and particularly the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the successful outcome of a most difficult negotiation.