Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 608 Loan Dispute
President Wilson was right; the League of Nations was indeed not a monolithic entity. To exaggerate a bit, it could even be divided into three factions: pro-British, pro-French, and pro-Western.

Britain and France, of course, need no further explanation. As long-established European powers, both Britain and France had a large number of supporters, and these countries naturally became their respective allies after joining the League of Nations.

Although Spain has only recently experienced a revival in modern times, thanks to Carlos's various strategic moves, it has already established connections with many European countries.

Besides the Austrian Empire and Italy, other European countries with close ties to Spain include the Kingdom of Belgium, the Grand Duchy of Finland, and the Kingdom of Estonia.

Italy is somewhere between pro-Western and centrist, while the other countries are more firmly pro-Western.

Carlo had anticipated Italy's opportunistic behavior. Firstly, Italy is, after all, one of the four permanent members of the League of Nations, a position far exceeding that of other ordinary European countries.

Secondly, the Italian government and King Vittorio Emanuele III harbored different ambitions; they were unwilling to be subordinate to Spain and become its loyal little brother.

Furthermore, given the relatively stable situation in Europe, Carlo allowed Italy to continue its opportunistic behavior. After all, Italy's firm support for Spain wasn't a good thing; doing so would amplify the Spanish threat in the eyes of Britain and France, ultimately proving counterproductive.

After the United States signaled its willingness to back down, Britain and France quickly relented and stopped insisting on a large sum of money in reparations from the United States.

On the one hand, Britain and France are well aware of the current financial situation of the United States, and that the United States cannot possibly compensate European countries with a large sum of money.

On the other hand, they were also unwilling to see Spain gain too much benefit. Spain was one of the countries least affected by the flu, and coincidentally, Spain was a superpower.

Britain's industrial scale and economic size were originally a level above Spain's. After this major flu pandemic, Britain's advantage will not only be completely gone, but the gap between Britain and Spain will definitely be narrowed considerably.

Under these circumstances, Britain and France had no choice but to increase their vigilance and wariness towards Spain. Even if they received less compensation themselves, they had to ensure that Spain did not receive too much money.

At the insistence of Britain and France, the four permanent members of the League of Nations quickly reached an agreement with the United States.

This is a shady deal, so the specific details of the agreement will not be made public, and not even a single word will be revealed.

The compensation received by the League of Nations countries will be distributed to them in the form of interest-free loans, as required by the US government.

After the Americans provide loans to European countries, the lending institutions will go bankrupt and dissolve without anyone noticing, turning the loan into a bad debt, which is essentially giving money to European countries in disguise.

Although the final outcome is the same, interest-free loans and compensation are ultimately two different concepts, which is why the US government insists on this.

European countries naturally had no reason to object to this. After all, as long as everyone actually received the money, the name under which it was received wasn't that important; as long as it didn't need to be repaid, it was a good thing.

In return for receiving a large interest-free loan, the League of Nations investigation team will conclude its investigation in a short period of time and provide the US government and people around the world with a detailed and verifiable report of findings.

President Wilson finally breathed a sigh of relief when he learned that the League of Nations investigation team had announced that it would release all the results of the investigation in a week.

Although the process was somewhat tortuous, the United States managed to weather the crisis. With external threats resolved, the minor internal troubles were not actually that serious.

After all, the conflict between blacks and whites has lasted for too long in the United States. Racial contradictions cannot defeat the United States. After all, whites still dominate the middle and upper classes of the country. The United States is still a white country, and blacks are just maggots attached to the body of the United States.

Despite the large scale of the Black Lives Matter protests, the government can quickly resolve them simply by deploying police. While the US government doesn't have many effective methods for dealing with white protesters, it has ample experience in handling Black protesters.

The guns that the police carry are no joke, and each state has its own armed forces that can forcibly suppress Black Lives Matter protests.

If Black people insist on fighting for political discourse, President Wilson wouldn't mind making them understand one thing: the principle of white supremacy.

With the US cleared of suspicion of spreading the flu, the US government could easily resolve the crisis by suppressing the Black Lives Matter protests with violence and then attributing all the deaths to the flu.

Nobody cares whether Black people live or die; their lives are as cheap as ants on the street.

On November 26, 1918, amid the uproar over the chemical plant leak in the United States, the League of Nations investigation team issued a statement announcing that its investigation, which had lasted for more than a month, had finally yielded results.

First, the results of this investigation show that the flu did indeed start in a military camp in Kansas, USA, and spread from the United States to the rest of the world.

During the investigation, the team discovered that a chemical plant in Kansas, USA, had experienced a leak, and reasonably suspected that the chemical leak may have caused the flu outbreak.

However, after extensive investigation and evidence collection, it was ultimately determined that the chemical plant leak was unrelated to the influenza outbreak. The leaked chemical toxins could not cause the spread of influenza, nor could they possess such a high level of infectivity.

The spread of this flu was an accident, with no human intervention and no one to be held responsible. After the statement was published in the newspaper, President Wilson eagerly grabbed a copy and read it, finally breathing a sigh of relief.

While this statement may not convince everyone that the United States is innocent in this flu outbreak, it can achieve the US government's goal as long as it convinces a significant portion of the public.

As for those who still suspect that the United States is the culprit, their suspicions are powerless against the US government and pose no threat to the US, so they are naturally not taken seriously by President Wilson.

In order to completely silence the European public, President Wilson even found a good reason for the interest-free loans that the United States paid to European countries.

That is, although the United States was not the real culprit behind the flu, the US government's negligence in dealing with the flu led to the flu spreading from the United States to Europe and eventually to the whole world.

The US government should bear some responsibility, and for this reason, it is willing to provide an interest-free loan to countries around the world that are severely affected by the flu to help them overcome the crisis.

Having such a reason is much better than providing interest-free loans to European countries without any pretext at all.

After all, without any cover-up, the United States' provision of interest-free loans to European countries would look like a deal to clear the United States of its crimes in exchange for the international alliance.

To President Wilson's surprise, his explanation for the US providing interest-free loans actually gave Britain and France a way to prevent Spain from receiving large sums of money.

Since the US government has stated that the aid is intended for countries severely affected by the flu, should Spain be excluded?

Even several European countries that are close to Spain have followed Spain's example and established influenza prevention measures earlier.

These countries were not significantly affected by the flu, and they should have received the smallest share of interest-free loans.

When British and French diplomatic representatives made this request at a League of Nations meeting, they immediately received a response from Spain.

The Spanish diplomatic representative stated that since the proportion of interest-free loans provided by the United States is limited, these loans should be allocated to countries that need them more.

Countries with large economies like Spain, Britain, and France can weather this crisis on their own.

Therefore, the Spanish diplomatic representative suggested that the majority of this interest-free loan be shared by the other non-permanent members of the League of Nations, with the remainder provided to other disaster-stricken countries that are not members of the League of Nations.

As for the four major powers of the League of Nations, as representatives of powerful countries within the League, they should have shouldered the burden themselves if their own economic size was sufficient; this would have been a reasonable distribution.

The proposal by the Spanish diplomatic representative backfired, causing Britain and France to shoot themselves in the foot.

Britain and France certainly didn't want Spain to receive too much reparations, but that didn't mean they didn't want the reparations at all.

Although the total amount of reparations paid by the United States was only $10 billion, when converted into pounds sterling, it amounted to a full £2 million, which was equivalent to Britain's total fiscal revenue for the entire year before the war.

This is an extremely large sum of money. Even if the League of Nations were to divide it among so many countries, each country would still receive at least several million pounds.

Whether used to purchase food and medical supplies for disaster relief or invested in industrial reconstruction after the flu, it can play a certain role.

Even if invested in military construction, several million pounds would be enough to build two super dreadnoughts.

Moreover, given the size of Britain and France, even if they were to cede a portion of their share to other League of Nations members, it wouldn't be enough to share it equally with them.

With Britain and France receiving the majority of the reparations, they would have been able to obtain at least tens of millions of pounds, which is no small sum.

Now, the Spanish diplomatic representative is trying to persuade Britain and France to completely waive the reparations with just a single sentence, which the British and French diplomatic representatives are clearly unwilling to accept.

The problem is that the previous recommendations from Britain and France provided sufficient justification for the Spanish diplomatic representatives.

Compared to superpowers like Britain, France, and Spain, those countries that were more severely affected by the disaster and had smaller industrial and economic scales clearly needed this interest-free loan more.

Since both Britain and France demanded that Spain relinquish this money, why didn't they relinquish it themselves? Isn't this a double standard?
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(End of this chapter)