V

REPARATION

185

(6) Cereals. There never was and never can be a netexport. (7) Leather goods. The same considera-tions apply as to wool.

We have now covered nearly half of Germany 's pre-war exports, and there is no other commodity whichformerly represented as much as 3 per cent of herexports. In what commodity is she to pay ? Dyes ?—their total value in 1913 was £10,000,000. Toys ?Potash?—1913 exports were worth £3,000,000.And even if the commodities could be specified,in what markets are they to be sold ?—rememberingthat we have in mind goods to the value not of tensof millions annually, but of hundreds of millions.

On the side of imports, rather more is possible.By lowering the standard of life, an appreciablereduction of expenditure on imported commoditiesmay be possible. But, as we have already seen,many large items are incapable of reduction withoutreacting on the volume of exports.

Let us put our guess as high as we can withoutbeing foolish, and suppose that after a time Germany will be able, in spite of the reduction of her resources,her facilities, her markets, and her productive power,to increase her exports and diminish her importsso as to improve her trade balance altogether by£100,000,000 annually, measured in pre-war prices.This adjustment is first required to liquidate theadverse trade balance, which in the five years beforethe war averaged £74,000,000 ; but we will assume