58 ESSAYS IN PERSUASION tart

export industries and diverted to other uses thecapital now employed in them, and if her formerEuropean associates decided to meet their obli-gations at whatever cost to themselves, I do notdeny that the final result might be to America ’smaterial interest. But the project is utterlychimerical. It will not happen. Nothing ismore certain than that America will not pur-sue such a policy to its conclusion; she willabandon it as soon as she experiences its firstconsequences. Nor, if she did, would theAllies pay the money. The position is exactlyparallel to that of German Reparation. America will not carry through to a conclusion the col-lection of Allied debt, any more than the Allies will carry through the collection of their presentReparation demands. Neither, in the long run,is serious politics. Nearly all well-informedpersons admit this in private conversation. Butwe live in a curious age when utterances in thepress are deliberately designed to be in con-formity with the worst-informed, instead ofwith the best-informed, opinion, because theformer is the wider spread; so that for com-paratively long periods there can be discrep-ancies, laughable or monstrous, between thewritten and the spoken word.

If this is so, it is not good business forAmerica to embitter her relations with Europe ,and to disorder her export industries for twoyears, in pursuance of a policy which she iscertain to abandon before it has profited her.

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