66

ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

moral and diplomatic position to claim a moder-ating and pacific influence in the Franco-German problems which still lie ahead.

(iii) Cancellation (1928) 1

Let us remember the origin of the War Debts.Soon after the beginning of the war it wasclear that certain of our Allies—Russia andBelgium in the first instance, but subsequentlyall of them—would require financial assistance.We might have given this in loans or insubsidies. Loans were preferred to subsidies,in order to preserve a greater sense of re-sponsibility and economy in the spending ofthem. But though financial assistance tookthe form of loans, it is scarcely to be supposedthat the lending countries regarded them atthe time as being in the nature of ordinaryinvestments. Indeed it would have been veryillogical to do so. For we often gave assistancein the form of money, precisely because wewere less able to assist with men or ships.For example, when we sent guns to Italy tohelp her after her first serious reverse, shehad to pay for them by loans. But whenmatters got worse still, and we sent not onlyguns but gunners too to man them and tobe killed, then we charged nothing. Yetin the former case Italy’ s contribution was thegreater and in the latter ours. In particular,

1 The material for this essay was prepared in connection witha Broadcast “Talk” given on May 3, 1928.