Now the only disinterested party has retired from the tribunal. The most interested party is in the chair, with a casting vote on certain questions. That is not the treaty signed by Germany.
If you sign an agreement to pay a sum to be awarded by A, B, C, D, and E, trusting for a fair hearing largely to the influence of A, who is not only very powerful but who is the only completely disinterested referee and A then retires from the board of arbitrators, you are entitled to claim that the character of the agreement is changed. The representatives of France and Belgium on the Reparations Commission are honourable men who are most anxious to do justice, but they are watched by a jealous, vigilant and exacting opinion constantly ready to find fault with concession and to overpower moderating judgment.
The balance of the treaty has therefore been entirely upset. What is really needed is to restore that balance so as to secure a fair verdict on the only question in issue—how much Germany can pay.
When you come to consider that issue you must view the claim for reparations as you would any ordinary debt. You must make up your mind whether you wish to ruin the debtor or to recover the cash. If there are no sufficient realisable assets, then, if you want your money, you must keep your debtor alive. If you want beef from your cow you must forgo the milk. If your object is to destroy your debtor, you press for payment of more than he can be reasonably expected to pay, and then seize his house, his lands, and his chattels, whether they can be disposed of or not.
On the other hand, if you want your money, you will find out what he can pay, and then proceed judiciously, patiently, and firmly to recover that amount. By that I do not mean what he can pay by condemning himself to a life of servitude and poverty. No brave nation will stand that long. That is not a method of recovering an old debt, but of creating a new one. I mean, what a nation can be expected to pay steadily without revolt for a whole generation.
If you scrape the butter from the bread of every German child for thirty years you may add to the sum of your indemnity a milliard or two of gold marks. That is not what was intended by the Treaty of Versailles. Hungry faces make angry hearts, and the anger spreads further than the hunger. I mean, what Germany can pay without condemning a generation of workers to Egyptian bondage, and their children to semi-starvation. Every oppression, if persisted in, ultimately ends in the ruin of the Red Sea for the oppressors. Europe has only just escaped with great loss from its waters. We do not want to be overwhelmed in another.
How are you to arrive at the exact figure of the annuities Germany can reasonably be expected to pay without creating these intolerable conditions for her people? That is the question. The answer was given in the treaty as signed: by setting up a commission to inquire and determine. That commission has been weakened, and its character almost destroyed by the defection of the United States of America.
Is it possible to find a substitute? I am afraid a reference of that question to a new committee of experts would not advance matters, for each country would demand a representative on that committee, and that would only mean the Reparations Commission over again under another name.
The only hope of a fair and final decision is to secure the presence of a representative of the United States of America on the adjudicating body, whatever it may be. Is that impossible?