h order.

A further point of great difficulty may be readily perceived between the
lines of the Treaty It fixes no definite sum as representing Germany's
liability. This feature has been the subject of very general
criticism,--that it is equally inconvenient to Germany and to the Allies
themselves that she should not know what she has to pay or they what
they are to receive. The method, apparently contemplated by the Treaty,
of arriving at the final result over a period of many months by an
addition of hundreds of thousands of individual claims for damage to
land, farm buildings, and chickens, is evidently impracticable; and the
reasonable course would have been for both parties to compound for a
round sum without examination of details. If this round sum had been
named in the Treaty, the settlement would have been placed on a more
business-like basis.

But this was impossible for two reasons. Two different kinds of false
statements had been widely promulgated, one as to Germany's capacity to
pay, the other as to the amount of the Allies' just claims in respect of
the devastated areas. The fixing of either of these figures presented a
dilemma. A figure for Germany's prospective capacity to pay, not too
much in excess of the estimates of most candid and well-informed
authorities, would have fallen hopelessly far short of popular
expectations both in England and in France. On the other hand, a
definitive figure for damage done which would not disastrously
disappoint the expectations which had been raised in France and Belgium
might have been incapable of substantiation under challenge,[105] and
open to damaging criticism on the part of the Germans, who were believed
to have been prudent enough to accumulate considerable evidence as to
the extent of their own misdoings.

By far the safest course for the politicians was, therefore, to mention
no figure at all; and from this necessity a great deal of the
complication of the Reparation Chapter essentially springs.

The reader may be interested, however, to have my estimate of the claim
which can in fact be substantiated under Annex I. of the Reparation
Chapter. In the first section of this chapter I have already guessed the
claims other than those for Pensions and Separation Allowances at
$15,000,000,000 (to take the extreme upper limit of my estimate). The
claim for Pensions and Separation Allowances under Annex I. is not to be
based on the _actual_ cost of these compens