. Thus do
the Viennese argue, still light-headed in adversity. But perhaps they
are right. The Reparation Commission will come into very close contact
with the problems of Europe; and it will bear a responsibility
proportionate to its powers. It may thus come to fulfil a very different
role from that which some of its authors intended for it. Transferred to
the League of Nations, an appanage of justice and no longer of interest,
who knows that by a change of heart and object the Reparation Commission
may not yet be transformed from an instrument of oppression and rapine
into an economic council of Europe, whose object is the restoration of
life and of happiness, even in the enemy countries?

_V_. _The German Counter-Proposals_

The German counter-proposals were somewhat obscure, and also rather
disingenuous. It will be remembered that those clauses of the Reparation
Chapter which dealt with the issue of bonds by Germany produced on the
public mind the impression that the Indemnity had been fixed at
$25,000,000,000, or at any rate at this figure as a minimum. The German
Delegation set out, therefore, to construct their reply on the basis of
this figure, assuming apparently that public opinion in Allied countries
would not be satisfied with less than the appearance of $25,000,000,000;
and, as they were not really prepared to offer so large a figure, they
exercised their ingenuity to produce a formula which might be
represented to Allied opinion as yielding this amount, whilst really
representing a much more modest sum. The formula produced was
transparent to any one who read it carefully and knew the facts, and it
could hardly have been expected by its authors to deceive the Allied
negotiators. The German tactic assumed, therefore, that the latter were
secretly as anxious as the Germans themselves to arrive at a settlement
which bore some relation to the facts, and that they would therefore be
willing, in view of the entanglements which they had got themselves into
with their own publics, to practise a little collusion in drafting the
Treaty,--a supposition which in slightly different circumstances might
have had a good deal of foundation. As matters actually were, this
subtlety did not benefit them, and they would have done much better with
a straightforward and candid estimate of what they believed to be the
amount of their liabilities on the one hand, and their capacity to pay
on the other.

The German offer of an