given. She has also hypothecated all her
national goods. What can she give now?

Germany can pay in three ways only:

1. Merchandise and food products on account of the indemnity: coal,
machines, chemical products, etc.

2. Credits abroad coming from the sale of merchandise. If Germany
exports, that is sells eight milliard marks' worth of goods abroad,
she pays two milliards to the Reparations Commission.

3. Property of private citizens. Germany can enslave herself, ceding
the property of her private citizens to foreign States or citizens to
be disposed of as they wish.

Excluding this last form, which would constitute slavery pure and
simple, as useless, as impossible, and calculated to parallel the
methods in use among barbarous peoples, there only remain the first
two methods of payment which we will examine briefly.

It must be remembered that Germany, even before the War, was in
difficulties for insufficient avenues of development, given the
restricted nature of her territory and the exuberance of her
population. Her territory, smaller than that of France and much less
fertile, must now nourish a population which stands to that of France
as three to two.

If we have had gigantic war losses, Germany, who fought on all the
fronts, has had losses certainly not inferior to ours. She too has
had, in larger or smaller proportion, her dead and her mutilated.
She has known the most atrocious sufferings from hunger. Thus her
productive power is much diminished, not only on account of the grave
difficulties in which her people find themselves (and the development
of tuberculosis is a terrible index), but also for the lowered
productive capacity of her working classes.

The statistics published by the Office of Public Health of the Empire
(_Reichsgesundheitsamt_) and those given in England by Professor
Starling and laid before the British Parliament, leave no doubt in the
matter.

Germany has had more than 1,800,000 dead and many more than 4,000,000
of wounded. She has her mass of orphans, widows and invalids. Taken
altogether the structure of her people has become much worse.

What constituted the great productive force of the German people was
not only its capacity to work, but the industrial organization which
she had created with fifty years of effort at home and abroad with
many sacrifices. Now Germany has not only lost 8 per cent. of her
population, but _25_ per cent. of her territory, from which cereals