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REPARATION

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£100,000,000 available for Eeparation, the upshotof the whole matter is that Belgium may possiblyget her £100,000,000 by May 1921, but none of theother Allies are likely to secure by that date anycontribution worth speaking of. At any rate, itwould be very imprudent for Finance Ministers tolay their plans on any other hypothesis.

3. Annual Payments spread over a Term of Years

It is evident that Germany 's pre-war capacity topay an annual foreign tribute has not been unaffectedby the almost total loss of her colonies, her overseasconnections, her mercantile marine, and her foreignproperties, by the cession of ten per cent of herterritory and population, of one-third of her coal andof three-quarters of her iron ore, by two millioncasualties amongst men in the prime of life, by thestarvation of her people for four years, by the burdenof a vast war debt, by the depreciation of her currencyto less than one-seventh its former value, by the dis-ruption of her allies and their territories, by Revolu-tion at home and Bolshevism on her borders, andby all the unmeasured ruin in strength and hope offour years of all-swallowing war and final defeat.

All this, one would have supposed, is evident.Yet most estimates of a great indemnity fromGermany depend on the assumption that she is ina position to conduct in the future a vastly greatertrade than ever she has had in the past.