e question of indemnities,--a feeling which is based, not on any
reasonable calculation of what Germany can, in fact, pay, but on a
well-founded appreciation of the unbearable financial situation in which
these countries will find themselves unless she pays. Take Italy as an
extreme example. If Italy can reasonably be expected to pay
$4,000,000,000, surely Germany can and ought to pay an immeasurably
higher figure. Or if it is decided (as it must be) that Austria can pay
next to nothing, is it not an intolerable conclusion that Italy should
be loaded with a crushing tribute, while Austria escapes? Or, to put it
slightly differently, how can Italy be expected to submit to payment of
this great sum and see Czecho-Slovakia pay little or nothing? At the
other end of the scale there is the United Kingdom. Here the financial
position is different, since to ask us to pay $4,000,000,000 is a very
different proposition from asking Italy to pay it. But the sentiment is
much the same. If we have to be satisfied without full compensation from
Germany, how bitter will be the protests against paying it to the
United States. We, it will be said, have to be content with a claim
against the bankrupt estates of Germany, France, Italy, and Russia,
whereas the United States has secured a first mortgage upon us. The case
of France is at least as overwhelming. She can barely secure from
Germany the full measure of the destruction of her countryside. Yet
victorious France must pay her friends and Allies more than four times
the indemnity which in the defeat of 1870 she paid Germany. The hand of
Bismarck was light compared with that of an Ally or of an Associate. A
settlement of Inter-Ally indebtedness is, therefore, an indispensable
preliminary to the peoples of the Allied countries facing, with other
than a maddened and exasperated heart, the inevitable truth about the
prospects of an indemnity from the enemy.

It might be an exaggeration to say that it is impossible for the
European Allies to pay the capital and interest due from them on these
debts, but to make them do so would certainly be to impose a crushing
burden. They may be expected, therefore, to make constant attempts to
evade or escape payment, and these attempts will be a constant source of
international friction and ill-will for many years to come. A debtor
nation does not love its creditor, and it is fruitless to expect
feelings of goodwill from France, Italy, and Russia toward