i6

ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

productivity at less than £50,000,000 annually.Germany is supposed to have profited about£100,000,000 per annum from her ships, herforeign investments, and her foreign bankingand connections, all of which have now beentaken from her. Her saving on armaments isfar more than balanced by her annual chargefor pensions now estimated at £2 50,000,000/which represents a real loss of productive cap-acity. And even if we put on one side theburden of the internal debt, which amounts to240 milliards of marks, as being a questionof internal distribution rather than of pro-ductivity, we must still allow for the foreigndebt incurred by Germany during the war, theexhaustion of her stock of raw materials, thedepletion of her live-stock, the impaired pro-ductivity of her soil from lack of manures andof labour, and the diminution in her wealthfrom the failure to keep up many repairs andrenewals over a period of nearly five years.Germany is not as rich as she was before thewar, and the diminution in her future savingsfor these reasons, quite apart from the factorspreviously allowed for, could hardly be put atless than ten per cent, that is £40,000,000annually.

These factors have already reduced Germany ’sannual surplus to less than the £100,000,000 at

1 The conversion at par of 5000 million marks overstates byreason of the existing depreciation of the mark, the present moneyburden of the actual pensions payments, but not, in all prob-ability, the real loss of national productivity as a result of thecasualties suffered in the war.