n pre-war prices;[129] whilst, if this amount is exacted,
there must be a decrease of far greater value in the export of
manufactured articles requiring coal for their production. (4) Woolen
goods. An increase is impossible without the raw wool, and, having
regard to the other claims on supplies of raw wool, a decrease is
likely. (5) Cotton goods. The same considerations apply as to wool. (6)
Cereals. There never was and never can be a net export. (7) Leather
goods. The same considerations apply as to wool.

We have now covered nearly half of Germany's pre-war exports, and there
is no other commodity which formerly represented as much as 3 per cent
of her exports. In what commodity is she to pay? Dyes?--their total
value in 1913 was $50,000,000. Toys? Potash?--1913 exports were worth
$15,000,000. And even if the commodities could be specified, in what
markets are they to be sold?--remembering that we have in mind goods to
the value not of tens of millions annually, but of hundreds of millions.

On the side of imports, rather more is possible. By lowering the
standard of life, an appreciable reduction of expenditure on imported
commodities may be possible. But, as we have already seen, many large
items are incapable of reduction without reacting on the volume of
exports.

Let us put our guess as high as we can without being foolish, and
suppose that after a time Germany will be able, in spite of the
reduction of her resources, her facilities, her markets, and her
productive power, to increase her exports and diminish her imports so as
to improve her trade balance altogether by $500,000,000 annually,
measured in pre-war prices. This adjustment is first required to
liquidate the adverse trade balance, which in the five years before the
war averaged $370,000,000; but we will assume that after allowing for
this, she is left with a favorable trade balance of $250,000,000 a year.
Doubling this to allow for the rise in pre-war prices, we have a figure
of $500,000,000. Having regard to the political, social, and human
factors, as well as to the purely economic, I doubt if Germany could be
made to pay this sum annually over a period of 30 years; but it would
not be foolish to assert or to hope that she could.

Such a figure, allowing 5 per cent for interest, and 1 per cent for
repayment of capital, represents a capital sum having a present value of
about $8,500,000,000.[130]

I reach, therefore, the final conclusion that, in