VISCOUNT TEMPLETOWNMy Lords, I rise to ask whether, in view of the fact that the children of France have been left out of the Archbishop's world-wide appeal for the "Save the Children's Fund" and that these children are suffering terribly from the want of milk, His Majesty's Government will insist on the Germans 969 fulfilling their obligations and returning to France without further delay the cows they took from her.
§ LORD STANMOREMy Lords, the obligations referred to are contained in Part VIII, Section 1, Annex 4, Paragraph 6 of the Treaty of' Peace with Germany, under which the German Government undertakes to deliver 90,000 milch cows to the French Government in equal monthly instalments during the three months following the coming into force of the Treaty. The responsibility for securing the execution of this and similar provisions of the Treaty is an inter-Allied responsibility, and does not fall upon His Majesty's Government alone. The Reparation Commission is the body charged under the Treaty with the carrying out of the provisions which I have mentioned. Although that body does not come into existence until the date when the Treaty of Peace becomes operative, the particular question to which the noble Lord refers is already being carefully examined by an inter-Allied Committee, which is organising the work of the Reparation Commission. His Majesty's Government fee the warmest sympathy with the sufferings of the French children; but, in the circumstances which I have described, the problem of looking after their interests and of remedying 970 the hardships caused by the shortage of milk in France is one that naturally devolves upon the French Government rather than on our own.