IV

PA YMENTS PRIOR TO MA Y 192 r

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agreed priority charge. This Agreement was repre-sented in the French press as laying new burdensupon France , or at least as withdrawing existing rightsfrom her. But this was not the case. The Agree-ment was directed throughout to moderating theharshness with which the letter of the Treaty andthe arrangements of Spa would have operatedagainst France. 1

The actual value of these deliveries is a strikingexample of how far the value of deliverable articlesfalls below the estimates which used to be current.The Reparation Commission have stated that thecredit which Germany will receive in respect of herMercantile Marine will amount to about 755 milliongold marks. This figure is low. partly because manyof the ships were disposed of after the slump in ton-nage. 2 Nevertheless, this was one of the tangibleassets of great value, which it was customary at onetime to invoke in answer to those who disputed

1 In view of the political difficulties in which this Agreement involvedM. Briand's Cabinet, the matter was apparently adjusted by Great Britain and Belgium receiving their quotas as above, " subject to adjustment of thefinal settlement" of the questions dealt with in the Agreement. The netresult on September 30, 1921, was that, including the above sum, GreatBritain had been repaid £5,445,000 in respect of the Spa coal advances,and had also received, or was in course of collecting, about £43,000,000towards the expenses of the Army of Occupation (approximately£50,000,000). Thus, as the result of three years' Reparations, Great Britain 'scosts of collection had been about £7,000,000 more than her receipts.

1 To value these ships at what they fetched during the slump, yet tovalue Germany 's liability for submarine destruction at what the ships costto replace during the boom, appears to be unjust. My estimate (in TheEconomic Consequences of the Peace, p. 161) of the value of the ships to bedelivered was £120,000,000.