[140] Whatever that may mean.

[141] Assuming that the capital sum is discharged evenly over a
period as short as thirty-three years, this has the effect of _halving_
the burden as compared with the payments required on the basis of 5 per
cent interest on the outstanding capital.

[142] I forbear to outline the further details of the German
offer as the above are the essential points.

[143] For this reason it is not strictly comparable with my
estimate of Germany's capacity in an earlier section of this chapter,
which estimate is on the basis of Germany's condition as it will be when
the rest of the Treaty has come into effect.

[144] Owing to delays on the part of the Allies in ratifying
the Treaty, the Reparation Commission had not yet been formally
constituted by the end of October, 1919. So far as I am aware,
therefore, nothing has been done to make the above offer effective. But,
perhaps in view of the circumstances, there has been an extension of the
date.

CHAPTER VI

EUROPE AFTER THE TREATY

This chapter must be one of pessimism. The Treaty includes no provisions
for the economic rehabilitation of Europe,--nothing to make the defeated
Central Empires into good neighbors, nothing to stabilize the new States
of Europe, nothing to reclaim Russia; nor does it promote in any way a
compact of economic solidarity amongst the Allies themselves; no
arrangement was reached at Paris for restoring the disordered finances
of France and Italy, or to adjust the systems of the Old World and the
New.

The Council of Four paid no attention to these issues, being preoccupied
with others,--Clemenceau to crush the economic life of his enemy, Lloyd
George to do a deal and bring home something which would pass muster for
a week, the President to do nothing that was not just and right. It is
an extraordinary fact that the fundamental economic problems of a Europe
starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was the one question in
which it was impossible to arouse the interest of the Four. Reparation
was their main excursion into the economic field, and they settled it
as a problem of theology, of polities, of electoral chicane, from every
point of view except that of the economic future of the States whose
destiny they were handling.

I leave, from this point onwards, Paris, the Conference, and the Treaty,
briefly to consider the present situation of Europe, as the War and the
Peace have made it; and it will n