_))[139] and on German internal expenditure, with
a view to insuring that Reparation payments are a first charge on the
country's entire resources; and it is to decide on the effect on German
economic life of demands for machinery, cattle, etc., and of the
scheduled deliveries of coal.

By Article 240 of the Treaty Germany expressly recognizes the Commission
and its powers "as the same may be constituted by the Allied and
Associated Governments," and "agrees irrevocably to the possession and
exercise by such Commission of the power and authority given to it under
the present Treaty." She undertakes to furnish the Commission with all
relevant information. And finally in Article 241, "Germany undertakes to
pass, issue, and maintain in force any legislation, orders, and decrees
that may be necessary to give complete effect to these provisions."

The comments on this of the German Financial Commission at Versailles
were hardly an exaggeration:--"German democracy is thus annihilated at
the very moment when the German people was about to build it up after a
severe struggle--annihilated by the very persons who throughout the war
never tired of maintaining that they sought to bring democracy to us....
Germany is no longer a people and a State, but becomes a mere trade
concern placed by its creditors in the hands of a receiver, without its
being granted so much as the opportunity to prove its willingness to
meet its obligations of its own accord. The Commission, which is to have
its permanent headquarters outside Germany, will possess in Germany
incomparably greater rights than the German Emperor ever possessed, the
German people under its regime would remain for decades to come shorn
of all rights, and deprived, to a far greater extent than any people in
the days of absolutism, of any independence of action, of any individual
aspiration in its economic or even in its ethical progress."

In their reply to these observations the Allies refused to admit that
there was any substance, ground, or force in them. "The observations of
the German Delegation," they pronounced, "present a view of this
Commission so distorted and so inexact that it is difficult to believe
that the clauses of the Treaty have been calmly or carefully examined.
It is not an engine of oppression or a device for interfering with
German sovereignty. It has no forces at its command; it has no executive
powers within the territory of Germany; it cannot, as is sugg