LINKS UP CHINA TO REPARATIONS
Paul Monroe Has Plan to Aid Orient and Solve Europe's War Tangle.
WASHINGTON IS TOLD
V. S. Would Accept Obligations Based on Improvements Made In China.
SHANGHAI, Feb. 1. (/P) -- A plan intended to alleviate the depression that has gripped America and Europe and to ease China's acute economic situation is under consideration by official Chinese circles. Paul Monroe, New York, internationally known educator, author and economist, and author of the American plan of returning Boxer indemnity funds to further Chinese education, has approached the Washington government with his plan. It was reported here officials at Washington also have the plan under consideration. Nanking Approves Plan. The scheme, which he said had been favorably received by Nanking officials of the national government, ingeniously links China's economic problems with those of German reparations and of European war debts to the United States. Briefly, Monroe suggests that by international action Germany be enabled to make reparation payments both in money and goods in sufficiently large quantities to furnish China the credit and machinery for domestic economic development. Such German advances would simultaneously be credited by France and England as reparations payments to them, while the United States would credit France and England with like amounts as payments on the latter's war debts to America. The United States in turn would accept China's obligations secured on improvements in China made possible by German advances. To Report to Stimson. Monroe intends to return to the United States in March and report to the state department on his conversations with Chinese leaders. Monroe emphasized the fact he was working in a private capacity. He has offered the plan, he said, solely because China would be greatly assisted in gaining a stable government and economic development, while European reparations and war debt tangles would to a large extent be solved. Monroe said that as far as the United States was concerned the crux of the plan was whether America would accept China's securities guaranteeing repayment of the amounts Germany advanced to China. These securities, Monroe said, probably were not "gilt-edged," but were perhaps better than those offered by the present European situation.