‘France now owes you war indemnities which you cannot collect. By putting them down against the obligations owed by you to France, you cancel this debt. However, we Germans have lent you during the war great sums, and furnished you with supplies without which you could never have continued the struggle. Since you cannot meet these obligations we shall secure ourselves, in part at least, by assuming France’s position as your creditor.’
On the whole, if the present state of things were to continue, Berlin, by the process of transferring credit, would be able to cause France the very considerable loss of about 15 billion francs owed her by Russia, and 6 billions owed by Germany’s vassal states—a total of at least 21 billions. Now that the Pan-German scheme has for the moment been accomplished, we can truthfully say that 21 billions of French money, at the lowest estimate, represented by Russia, Austrian, Hungarian, Serbian, Bulgarian, and Turkish securities, have been virtually Pan-Germanized.
CHAPTER III
The Necessity for a Decision
In the preceding chapters I have pointed out that the advantages which Germany has already gained through the war, or has assured for herself in the future, if the present situation remains essentially unchanged, consist of seven chief elements. Before we arrive at final conclusions concerning these elements, let us establish the following facts:—
1. In three years of war, Germany has spent on the war 1612 francs per capita of her population. France, in the same period, has spent 2200 francs per capita—that is to say, 608 francs, or the immense figure of 38 per cent, more than Germany.
If the formula ‘without indemnity’ be adopted, with respect to the expenses of the war, far indeed from serving the cause of the Right, it would result in this unspeakable iniquity: each Frenchman who desired peace would have to bear a financial burden heavier by more than a third than that of each German and loyal subject of the Kaiser who loosed the dogs of war. Therefore this enormous difference—38 per cent—in the per capita war-expenses between France and Germany would in itself suffice to make the economic—and hence the political—downfall of France, swift, complete, inevitable, and beyond recall.
2. Unquestionably Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, as separate states, have been ruined by their war-expenses, but this ruin is all to the advantage of Germany, as it throws her vassals into a condition of absolute financial dependence. As a result, if Pan-Germany is to continue to exist, the Berlin government must be the unchallenged controller of all the financial combinations on which the peace and well-being of Pan-Germany depend. Now these combinations evidently can serve only to strengthen the German hegemony.
No parallel situation is to be found among the Entente powers. The ruin of Russia, for example, would simply make the ruin of France more inevitable, unless a decisive victory of the Allies were to rob Germany of her iniquitous spoils and at the same time guarantee to France the legitimate reparation which alone can save her from irretrievable financial disaster.
3. If Germany can still continue to float new internal loans with comparative ease, it is because her wholesale territorial and Pan-German seizures are considered by her people as new pledges of the credit of the German state as the heart of Pan-Germany.
4. France, which has spent in three years of war 2500 francs per capita of her population, has suffered only loss: 20,000 square kilometres of her territory have been invaded, and given over to undreamed-of spoliation at German hands. Germany, on the other hand, which has spent only 1691 francs per capita for the war, has occupied 500,000 square kilometres of foreign soil, burglarized her own allies, and piled up huge profits from the war.