I 10

A REVISION OF THE TREATY

CHAP.

Commission took up towards indirect pecuniary andbusiness losses arising in the devastated districts outof the war. But I do not think that such claimsare admissible under the Treaty . Such losses, realthough they were, were not essentially different fromanalogous losses occurring in other areas, and indeedthroughout the territory of the Allies. The maximumclaim, however, on this head would not go far towardsjustifying the above figure, and we can allow aconsiderable margin of error for such additionalitems without impairing the conclusion that the claimis exaggerated. In The Economic Consequences ofthe Peace (p. 117) I estimated that £250,000,000(gold) might be a fair estimate for damage to houseproperty; and I still think that this was aboutright.

(2) This claim for damage to houses is exclusiveof furniture and fittings, which are the subject of aseparate claim, namely, for 11,417 million gold marks,or nearly £700,000,000 sterling. To check this figurelet us assume that the whole of the furniture andfittings were destroyed, not only where the houseswere destroyed, but also in every case where a housewas damaged. This is an overstatement, but we mayset it off against the fact that in a good many casesthe furniture may have been looted and not recoveredby restitution (a large amount has, in fact, beenrecovered in this way), although the structure of thehouse was not damaged at all. The total number of