be, when it had been laid down in the treaty
what damage was to be indemnified, the French negotiators claimed
sixty-five per cent., leaving thirty-five per cent. for all the
others.

What was necessary was to lay down proportions, not the actual amount
of the sum. It was impossible to say at once what amount the damages
would reach: that was the business of the Reparations Commission.

Instead of inserting in the treaty the enormous figures spoken of, the
quality, not the quantity, of the damages to be indemnified was laid
down. But the standard of reckoning led to fantastic figures.

An impossible amount had to be paid, and the delegations were
discussing then the very same things that are being discussed now. The
American experts saw the gross mistake of the other delegations, and
put down as the maximum payment 325 milliard marks up to 1951, the
first payment to be 25 milliard marks in 1921. So was invented the
Reparations Commission machine, a thing which has no precedent in any
treaty, being a commission with sovereign powers to control the life
of the whole of Germany.

In actual truth no serious person has ever thought that Germany can
pay more than a certain number of milliards a year, no one believes
that a country can be subjected to a regime of control for thirty
years.

But the directing line of work of the treaties has been to break down
Germany, to cut her up, to suffocate her.

France had but one idea, and later on did not hesitate to admit it:
to dismember Germany, to destroy her unity. By creating intolerable
conditions of life, taking away territory on the frontier, putting
large districts under military occupation, delaying or not making any
diplomatic appointments and carrying on communications solely through
military commissions, a state of things was brought about which must
inevitably tend to weaken the constitutional unity of the German
Empire. Taking away from Germany 84 thousand kilometres of territory,
nearly eight million inhabitants and all the most important mineral
resources, preventing the unity of the German people and the six
million and five hundred thousand of German Austrians to which
Austria was then reduced, putting the whole German country under an
interminable series of controls--all this did more harm to German
unity than would have been done by taking the responsibility of a
forcible and immediate division to which the Germans could not have
consented and which the Al