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The Mellon-Berenger Agreement (or Mellon-Bérenger Accord) (20 April 1926) was an agreement on the amount and rate of repayment of France's debt to the United States arising from loans and payments in kind made during World War I (1914-1918), both before and after the armistice with Germany. The agreement greatly reduced the amount owing by France, with relatively easy payment terms. However, it was deeply unpopular in France, whose people felt that the United States should waive the debt in light of the huge losses of life and material damage that France had suffered, or at least link payments to reparations from Germany. Ratification by the French parliament was delayed until July 1929. The Great Depression began soon after. In the end, little of the debt was repaid. ==Initial agreement== The Dawes Plan of 1924 defined a realistic schedule for German reparations to the victorious Allies in World War I. By establishing confidence, it made it possible for Germany to borrow from the United States at reasonable rates, and use this money to pay Great Britain and France. They in turn used the reparations to repay their debt to the United States, in what John Maynard Keynes described as a great "circular flow of money". The United States began quietly preventing private or public loans to France as long as the question of debt repayment remained unsettled, creating pressure on the franc. Financiers and government experts on finance in France came to accept that a clear agreement was needed. In the agreement made with Britain, payments were linked to payments of reparations to France by Germany. The French wanted a similar clause linking the payments to the United States to reparations, but the U.S. would not accept this linkage. The April 1926 agreement was the most favorable that could be negotiated. The French ambassador Henry Bérenger signed the agreement subject to ratification by the French parliament. The American Debt Commission said it "believes that this settlement represents substantially France's capacity to pay." President Coolidge in his message to Congress said, "I believe that the settlement ... is fair and just to both Governments and recommend its approval." The reaction was less positive in France, where twenty thousand war veterans demonstrated in Paris against the agreement. The British were also critical. The great majority of French people felt the United States should waive its claims to war debts, and successive governments delayed ratification. A related issue was that Prohibition in the United States had hurt French exports, and punitive tariffs on other French goods had created a serious imbalance of trade between the two countries. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mellon–Berenger Agreement」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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