And how fantastic the demands for compensation have become!
An old Italian proverb says, "In time of war there are more lies than earth." Ancient and modern pottery reproduce the motto, which is widespread, and whose truth was not understood until some years ago. So many foolish things were said about the almost mysterious manoeuvres of Germany, about her vast expansion, her great resources and accumulated capital, that the reality tended to become lost to sight.
These absurd legends, formed during the War, were not forgotten, and there are even now many who believe in good faith that Germany can pay, if not twenty or twenty-five milliards a year, at least eight or nine without any difficulty.
France's shrewdest politicians, however, well knew that the demand for an enormous and unlimited indemnity was only a means of putting Germany under control and depressing her to the point of exhaustion. But the others maintained this proposal more out of rancour and hatred than from any actual political concept. It may be said that the problem of the indemnity has never been seriously studied and that the calculations, the valuations, the procedures, have all formed a series of impulsive acts co-ordinated by a single error, the error of the French politicians who had the one aim of holding Germany down.
The procedure was simple.
In the first phase the indemnities came into being from three words inserted almost by chance into the armistice treaty on November 2, 1918, réparation des dommages. It was merely a matter of a simple expression to content public feeling: Je supplie le conseil de se mettre dans l'esprit de la population française…. It was a moral concession, a moral satisfaction.
But afterwards, as things went on, all was altered when it came to preparing the treaties.
For a while the idea, not only of a reparation of damages, but of the payment of the cost of the War was entertained. It was maintained that the practice of making the vanquished reimburse the cost of the War was permitted by international law. Since Germany had provoked the War and lost it, she must not only furnish an indemnity for the losses, but also pay the cost.
The cost was calculated roughly at seven hundred milliards of francs at par. Further, there was the damage to assess. In the aggregate, war costs, damage to property, damage to persons, came to at least one thousand milliards. But since it was impossible to demand immediate payment and was necessary to spread the sum over fifty years, taking into consideration sinking funds and interest the total came to three thousand milliards. The amount was published by the illustrated papers with the usual diagrams, drawings of golden globes, length of paper money if stretched out, height of metal if all piled up together, etc. etc.
These figures were discussed for the first few months by a public accustomed to be surprised at nothing. They merely helped to demonstrate that an indemnity of 350 milliards was a real sacrifice for the Allies.