vii THE SETTLEMENT OF EUROPE iSi

cent, represents an annual charge of $390,000,000(£78,000,000 gold). But in my opinion the chance ofher being actually paid any considerable amount ofthis, if she tries to exact it, is decidedly remote. 1 Isthere any likelihood of the United States joining insuch a scheme soon enough (for I feel confident shewill cancel these debts in the end) to be useful ?

Most Americans, with whom I have discussed thisquestion, express themselves as personally favourableto the cancellation of the European debts, but addthat so great a majority of their countrymen thinkotherwise that such a proposal is at present outsidepractical politics. They think, therefore, that it ispremature to discuss it; for the present, America must pretend she is going to demand the money andEurope must pretend she is going to pay it. Indeed,the position is much the same as that of GermanReparation in England in the middle of 1921. Doubt-less my informants are right about this public opinion,the mysterious entity which is the same thing perhapsas Rousseau' s General Will. Yet, all the same, I donot attach, to what they tell me, too much importance.Public opinion held that Hans Andersen' s Emperorwore a fine suit; and in the United States especially,public opinion changes sometimes, as it were, en bloc.

1 This scheme is in no way concerned with the debt of Great Britain tothe United States, which is excluded from the above figures. The ques-tion of the right treatment of this debt (which differs from the others chieflybecause the interest on it is capable of being actually collected in cash)raises other issues with which I am not dealing here. The above proposalsfor cancellation relate solely to the debts owing by the Governments of Con-tinental Europe to the Governments of Great Britain and the United States.