136 THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE ch.

all claim to participation in this sum, and that anyshare to which she proves entitled be placed at thedisposal of the Conference for the purpose of aid-ing the finances of the New States about to beestablished; (4) that in order to make some basisof credit immediately available an appropriate pro-portion of the German obligations representing thesum to be paid by her should be guaranteed by allparties to the Treaty ; and (5) that the ex-enemyPowers should also be allowed, with a view to theireconomic restoration, to issue a moderate amount ofbonds carrying a similar guarantee. Such proposalsinvolved an appeal to the generosity of the UnitedStates . But that was inevitable ; and, in view ofher far less financial sacrifices, it was an appealwhich could fairly have been made to her. Suchproposals would have been practicable. There isnothing in them quixotic or Utopian. And theywould have opened up for Europe some prospect offinancial stability and reconstruction.

The further elaboration of these ideas, however,must be left to Chapter VII., and we must returnto Paris . I have described the entanglements whichMr. Lloyd George took with him. The position ofthe Finance Ministers of the other Allies was evenworse. We in Great Britain had not based ourfinancial arrangements on any expectation of anindemnity. Receipts from such a source would havebeen more or less in the nature of a windfall; and,