i" THE WIESBADEN AGREEMENT 89

due to labour employed on the spot and not tomaterials capable of being imported from Germany ),are not likely to amount, during the next five years,to a sum of money which the other Allies needgrudge France as a priority claim.

My other reserve relates to the supposed im-portance of the Wiesbaden Agreement as a precedentfor similar arrangements with the other Allies, andraises the general issue of the utility of arrangementsfor securing that Germany should pay in land ratherthan in cash, for other purposes than those of thedevastated areas.

It is commonly believed that, if our demands onGermany are met by her delivering to us not cashbut particular commodities selected by ourselves, wecan thus avoid the competition of German productsagainst our own in the markets of the world, whichmust result if we compel her to find foreign currencyby selling goods abroad at whatever cut in pricemay be necessary to market them. 1

Most suggestions in favour of our being paid inkind are too vague to be criticised. But theyusually suffer from the confusion of supposing thatthere is some advantage in our being paid directlyin kind even in the case of articles which Germany might be expected to export in any case. Forexample, the Annexes to the Treaty which deal withdeliveries in kind chiefly relate to coal, dyestuffs,

1 I return to the theoretical aspects of this question in Chapter VI.