260 THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE CH.

Germany can and ought to pay an immeasurablyhigher figure. Or if it is decided (as it must be)that Austria can pay next to nothing, is it not anintolerable conclusion that Italy should be loadedwith a crushing tribute, while Austria escapes ? Or,to put it slightly differently, how can Italy be ex-pected to submit to payment of this great sum andsee Czecho-Slovakia pay little or nothing? At theother end of the scale there is the United Kingdom .Here the financial position is different, since to ask usto pay £800,000,000 is a very different propositionfrom asking Italy to pay it. But the sentimentis much the same. If we have to be satisfied with-out full compensation from Germany , how bitter willbe the protests against paying it to the UnitedStates . We, it will be said, have to be content witha claim against the bankrupt estates of Germany ,France, Italy, and Russia, whereas the United States has secured a first mortgage upon us. The caseof France is at least as overwhelming. She canbarely secure from Germany the full measure of thedestruction of her countryside. Yet victoriousFrance must pay her friends and Allies more thanfour times the indemnity which in the defeat of1870 she paid Germany . The hand of Bismarckwas light compared with that of an Ally or of anAssociate. A settlement of Inter-Ally indebtednessis, therefore, an indispensable preliminary to thepeoples of the Allied countries facing, with other