Note M. Tardieu’s argument. He fears the restoration of Germany industry, unless we make her pay the whole indemnity. That is to say, in other words, if we compel Germany to produce during the next twenty-five years something like ten thousand millions worth of wealth over and above her own needs, involving as it must a far greater output from her factories, mines, shipyards, laboratories, a far greater development of her railways, ports, canals, a far greater efficiency and capacity in her workers than has ever been known in the past, if that takes place as it must if we are to get an indemnity on the French scale, why, in that case, there will be no risk of Germany’s making too great an economic recovery!
The English Press is not much better. It was in December, 1918, that Professor Starling presented to the British Government his report showing that unless Germany had more food she would be utterly unable to pay any large indemnity to aid in reparations to France. Fully eighteen months later we find the Daily Mail (June 18, 1920) rampaging and shouting itself hoarse at the monstrous discovery that the Government have permitted Germans to purchase wheat! Yet the Mail has been foremost in insisting upon France’s dire need for a German indemnity in order to restore devastated districts. If the Mail is really representative of John Bull, then that person is at present in the position of a farmer who at seed-time is made violently angry at the suggestion that grain should be taken for the purpose of sowing the land, and shouts that it is a wicked proposal to take food from the mouths of his children. Although the Northcliffe Press has itself published page advertisements (from the Save the Children Fund) describing the incredible and appalling conditions in Europe, the Daily Mail shouts in its leading article: ‘Is British Food to go to the Boches?’ The thing is in the best war style. ‘Is there any reason why the Briton should be starved to feed the German?’ asks the Mail. And there follows, of course, the usual invective about the submarines, war criminals, the sinking of hospital ships, and the approval by the whole German people of all these crimes.
We get here, as at every turn and twist of our policy, not any recognition of interdependence, but a complete repudiation of that idea, and an assumption, instead, of a conflict of interest. If the children of Vienna or Berlin are to be fed, then it is assumed that it must be at the expense of the children of Paris and London. The wealth of the world is conceived as a fixed quantity, unaffected by any process of co-operation between the peoples sharing the world. The idea is, of course, an utter fallacy. French or Belgian children will have more, not less, if we take measures to avoid European conditions in which the children of Vienna are left to die. If, during the winter of 1919-1920, French children died from sickness due to lack of fuel, it was because the German coal was not delivered, and the German coal was not delivered because, among other things, of general disorganization of transport, of lack of rolling stock, of underfeeding of the miners, of collapse of the currency, political unrest, uncertainty of the future.
It is one of the contradictions of the whole situation that France herself gives intermittent recognition to the fact of this interdependence. When, at Spa, it became evident that coal simply could not be delivered in the quantities demanded unless Germany had some means of buying imported food, France consented to what was in fact a loan to Germany (to the immense mystification of certain journalistic critics in Paris). One is prompted to ask what those who, before the War so scornfully treated the present writer for throwing doubts upon the feasibility of a post-war indemnity, would have said had he predicted that on the morrow of victory, the victor, instead of collecting a vast indemnity would from the simplest motives of self-protection, out of his own direly depleted store of capital, be advancing money to the vanquished.[12]
The same inconsistency runs through much of our post-war behaviour. The famine in Central Europe has become so appalling that very great sums are collected in Britain and America for its relief. Yet the reduced productivity out of which the famine has arisen was quite obviously deliberately designed, and most elaborately planned by the economic provisions of the Treaty and by the blockades prolonged after the Armistice, for months in the case of Germany and years in the case of Russia. And at the very time that advertisements were appearing in the Daily Mail for ‘Help to Starving Europe,’ and only a few weeks before France consented to advance money for the purpose of feeding Germany, that paper was working up ‘anti-Hun stunts’ for the purpose of using our power to prevent any food whatsoever going to Boches. It is also a duplication of the American phenomenon already touched upon: One Bill before Congress for the loaning of American money to Europe in order that cotton and wheat may find a market: another Bill before the same Congress designed, by a stiffly increased tariff, to keep out European goods so that the loans can never be repaid.[13]
The experience of France in the attempt to exact coal by the use of military pressure throws a good deal of light upon what is really annexed when a victor takes over territory containing, say, coal; as also upon the question of getting the coal when it has been annexed. ‘If we need coal,’ wrote a Paris journalist plaintively during the Spa Conference, ‘why in heaven’s name don’t we go and take it.’ The implication being that it could be ‘taken’ without payment, for nothing. But even if France were to occupy the Ruhr and to administer the mines, the plant would have to be put in order, rolling stock provided, railroads restored, and, as France has already learned, miners fed and clothed and housed. But that costs money—to be paid as part of the cost of the coal. If Germany is compelled to provide those things—mining machinery, rolling stock, rails, miners’ houses and clothing and food—we are confronted with pretty much the same dilemma as we encounter in compelling the payment of an indemnity. A Germany that can buy foreign food is a Germany of restored credit; a Germany that can furnish rolling stock, rails, mining machinery, clothing and housing for miners, is a Germany restored to general economic health—and potentially powerful. That Germany France fears to create. And even though we resort to a military occupation, using forced labour militarily controlled, we are faced by the need of all the things that must still enter in the getting of the coal, from miners’ food and houses to plant and steel rails. Their cost must be charged against the coal obtained. And the amount of coal obtained in return for a given outlay will depend very largely, as we know in England to our cost, upon the willingness of the miner himself. Even the measure of resistance provoked in British miners by disputes about workers’ control and Nationalisation, has meant a great falling off in output. But at least they are working for their own countrymen. What would be their output if they felt they were working for an enemy, and that every ton they mined might merely result in increasing the ultimate demands which that enemy would make upon their country? Should we get even eighty per cent, of the pre-war output or anything like it?[14] Yet that diminished output would have to stand the cost of all the permanent charges aforesaid. Would the cost of the coal to France, under some scheme of forced labour, be in the end less than if she were to buy it in the ordinary commercial way from German mines, as she did before the War? This latter method would almost certainly be in economic terms more advantageous. Where is the economic advantage of the military method? This, of course, is only the re-discovery of the old truth that forced or slave labour is more costly than paid labour.
The ultimate explanation of the higher cost of slave labour is the ultimate explanation of the difficulty of using political power for economic ends, of basing our economic security upon military predominance. Here is France, with her old enemy helpless and prostrate. She needs his work for reparations, for indemnities, for coal. To perform that work the prostrate enemy must get upon his feet. If he does, France fears that he will knock her down. From that fear arise contradictory policies, self-stultifying courses. If she overcomes her fear sufficiently to allow the enemy to produce a certain amount of wealth for her, it is extremely likely that more than the amount of that wealth will have to be spent in protecting herself against the danger of the enemy’s recovered vitality. Even when wars were less expensive than they are, indemnities were soon absorbed in the increase of armament necessitated by the Treaties which exacted the indemnities.
Again, this is a very ancient story. The victor on the Egyptian vase has his captured enemy on the end of a rope. We say that one is free, the other bond. But as Spencer has shown us, both are bond. The victor is tied to the vanquished: if he should let go the prisoner would escape. The victor spends his time seeing that the prisoner does not escape; the prisoner his time and energy trying to escape. The combined efforts in consequence are not turned to the production of wealth; they are ‘cancelled out’ by being turned one against another. Both may come near to starvation in that condition if much labour is needed to produce food. Only if they strike a bargain and co-operate will they be in the position each to turn his energy to the best economic account.
But though the story is ancient, men have not yet read it. These pages are an attempt to show why it has not been read.
Let us summarise the conclusions so far reached, namely:—