FOOTNOTE:
[2] This chapter was written at Ronda (Spain).
X REPARATIONS
What is the reparations problem? Why does it appear to be further from solution than ever?
The great public in all lands are perplexed and worried by its disturbing insolubility. It keeps them wondering what may happen next, and that is never good for a nerve-ridden subject like postwar Europe.
The real trouble is not in solving the problem itself, but in satisfying the public opinion which surrounds it. I do not mean to suggest that it is an easy matter to ascertain what payments Germany can make, or for Germany to pay and keep paying these sums once they have been ascertained. But if the difficulty were purely financial it could be overcome. The heart of the problem lies in the impossibility at present of convincing the expectant, indignant, hard-hit and heavily burdened people of France that the sums so fixed represent all that Germany is capable of paying.
The question of compelling a country to pay across its frontiers huge sums convertible into the currency of other countries is a new one. At first it was too readily taken for granted that a wealth which could bear a war debt of £8,000,000,000 could surely afford to bear an indemnity of £6,000,000,000 provided that this smaller sum were made a first charge on the national revenues; and it took time for the average mind to appreciate the fundamental difference between payment inside and transmission outside a country.
When I think of the estimates framed in 1919 by experts of high intelligence and trained experience as to Germany's capacity to pay cash over the border I am not disposed to complain of the impatience displayed by French taxpayers at the efforts made at successive conferences to hew down those sanguine estimates to feasible dimensions. I am content to point with pride to the fact that the common sense of the more heavily burdened British taxpayer has long ago taught him to cut his loss and keep his temper. When his example is followed all round, the reparations question is already solved.