The Economic Consequences of the Peace Part 7

It will help to guide our ideas to quote the official survey of Belgian wealth, published in 1913 by the Finance Ministry of Belgium, which was as follows:

Land $1,320,000,000 Buildings 1,175,000,000 Personal wealth 2,725,000,000 Cash 85,000,000 Furniture, etc 600,000,000 -------------- $5,905,000,000

This total yields an average of $780 per inhabitant, which Dr. Stamp, the highest authority on the subject, is disposed to consider as _prima facie_ too low (though he does not accept certain much higher estimates lately current), the corresponding wealth per head (to take Belgium's immediate neighbors) being $835 for Holland, $1,220 for Germany, and $1,515 for France.[83] A total of $7,500,000,000, giving an average of about $1,000 per head, would, however, be fairly liberal. The official estimate of land and buildings is likely to be more accurate than the rest. On the other hand, allowance has to be made for the increased costs of construction.

Having regard to all these considerations, I do not put the money value of the actual _physical_ loss of Belgian property by destruction and loot above $750,000,000 _as a maximum_, and while I hesitate to put yet lower an estimate which differs so widely from those generally current, I shall be surprised if it proves possible to substantiate claims even to this amount. Claims in respect of levies, fines, requisitions, and so forth might possibly amount to a further $500,000,000. If the sums advanced to Belgium by her allies for the general costs of the war are to be included, a sum of about $1,250,000,000 has to be added (which includes the cost of relief), bringing the total to $2,500,000,000.

The destruction in France was on an altogether more significant scale, not only as regards the length of the battle line, but also on account of the immensely deeper area of country over which the battle swayed from time to time. It is a popular delusion to think of Belgium as the princ.i.p.al victim of the war; it will turn out, I believe, that taking account of casualties, loss of property and burden of future debt, Belgium has made the least relative sacrifice of all the belligerents except the United States. Of the Allies, Serbia's sufferings and loss have been proportionately the greatest, and after Serbia, France. France in all essentials was just as much the victim of German ambition as was Belgium, and France's entry into the war was just as unavoidable.

France, in my judgment, in spite of her policy at the Peace Conference, a policy largely traceable to her sufferings, has the greatest claims on our generosity.

The special position occupied by Belgium in the popular mind is due, of course, to the fact that in 1914 her sacrifice was by far the greatest of any of the Allies. But after 1914 she played a minor role.

Consequently, by the end of 1918, her relative sacrifices, apart from those sufferings from invasion which cannot be measured in money, had fallen behind, and in some respects they were not even as great, for example, as Australia's. I say this with no wish to evade the obligations towards Belgium under which the p.r.o.nouncements of our responsible statesmen at many different dates have certainly laid us.

Great Britain ought not to seek any payment at all from Germany for herself until the just claims of Belgium have been fully satisfied. But this is no reason why we or they should not tell the truth about the amount.

While the French claims are immensely greater, here too there has been excessive exaggeration, as responsible French statisticians have themselves pointed out. Not above 10 per cent of the area of France was effectively occupied by the enemy, and not above 4 per cent lay within the area of substantial devastation. Of the sixty French towns having a population exceeding 35,000, only two were destroyed--Reims (115,178) and St. Quentin (55,571); three others were occupied--Lille, Roubaix, and Douai--and suffered from loot of machinery and other property, but were not substantially injured otherwise. Amiens, Calais, Dunkerque, and Boulogne suffered secondary damage by bombardment and from the air; but the value of Calais and Boulogne must have been increased by the new works of various kinds erected for the use of the British Army.

The _Annuaire Statistique de la France, 1917_, values the entire house property of France at $11,900,000,000 (59.5 milliard francs).[84] An estimate current in France of $4,000,000,000 (20 milliard francs) for the destruction of house property alone is, therefore, obviously wide of the mark.[85] $600,000,000 at pre-war prices, or say $1,250,000,000 at the present time, is much nearer the right figure. Estimates of the value of the land of France (apart from buildings) vary from $12,400,000,000 to $15,580,000,000, so that it would be extravagant to put the damage on this head as high as $500,000,000. Farm Capital for the whole of France has not been put by responsible authorities above $2,100,000,000.[86] There remain the loss of furniture and machinery, the damage to the coal-mines and the transport system, and many other minor items. But these losses, however serious, cannot be reckoned in value by hundreds of millions of dollars in respect of so small a part of France. In short, it will be difficult to establish a bill exceeding $2,500,000,000 for _physical and material_ damage in the occupied and devastated areas of Northern France.[87] I am confirmed in this estimate by the opinion of M. Rene Pupin, the author of the most comprehensive and scientific estimate of the pre-war wealth of France,[88] which I did not come across until after my own figure had been arrived at. This authority estimates the material losses of the invaded regions at from $2,000,000,000 to $3,000,000,000 (10 to 15 milliards),[89] between which my own figure falls half-way.

Nevertheless, M. Dubois, speaking on behalf of the Budget Commission of the Chamber, has given the figure of $13,000,000,000 (65 milliard francs) "as a minimum" without counting "war levies, losses at sea, the roads, or the loss of public monuments." And M. Loucheur, the Minister of Industrial Reconstruction, stated before the Senate on the 17th February, 1919, that the reconst.i.tution of the devastated regions would involve an expenditure of $15,000,000,000 (75 milliard francs),--more than double M. Pupin's estimate of the entire wealth of their inhabitants. But then at that time M. Loucheur was taking a prominent part in advocating the claims of France before the Peace Conference, and, like others, may have found strict veracity inconsistent with the demands of patriotism.[90]

The figure discussed so far is not, however, the totality of the French claims. There remain, in particular, levies and requisitions on the occupied areas and the losses of the French mercantile marine at sea from the attacks of German cruisers and submarines. Probably $1,000,000,000 would be ample to cover all such claims; but to be on the safe side, we will, somewhat arbitrarily, make an addition to the French claim of $1,500,000,000 on all heads, bringing it to $4,000,000,000 in all.

The statements of M. Dubois and M. Loucheur were made in the early spring of 1919. A speech delivered by M. Klotz before the French Chamber six months later (Sept. 5, 1919) was less excusable. In this speech the French Minister of Finance estimated the total French claims for damage to property (presumably inclusive of losses at sea, etc., but apart from pensions and allowances) at $26,800,000,000 (134 milliard francs), or more than six times my estimate. Even if my figure prove erroneous, M.

Klotz's can never have been justified. So grave has been the deception practised on the French people by their Ministers that when the inevitable enlightenment comes, as it soon must (both as to their own claims and as to Germany's capacity to meet them), the repercussions will strike at more than M. Klotz, and may even involve the order of Government and Society for which he stands.

British claims on the present basis would be practically limited to losses by sea--losses of hulls and losses of cargoes. Claims would lie, of course, for damage to civilian property in air raids and by bombardment from the sea, but in relation to such figures as we are now dealing with, the money value involved is insignificant,--$25,000,000 might cover them all, and $50,000,000 would certainly do so.

The British mercantile vessels lost by enemy action, excluding fishing vessels, numbered 2479, with an aggregate of 7,759,090 tons gross.[91]

There is room for considerable divergence of opinion as to the proper rate to take for replacement cost; at the figure of $150 per gross ton, which with the rapid growth of shipbuilding may soon be too high but can be replaced by any other which better authorities[92] may prefer, the aggregate claim is $1,150,000,000. To this must be added the loss of cargoes, the value of which is almost entirely a matter of guesswork. An estimate of $200 per ton of shipping lost may be as good an approximation as is possible, that is to say $1,550,000,000, making $2,700,000,000 altogether.

An addition to this of $150,000,000, to cover air raids, bombardments, claims of interned civilians, and miscellaneous items of every description, should be more than sufficient,--making a total claim for Great Britain of $2,850,000,000. It is surprising, perhaps, that the money value of Great Britain's claim should be so little short of that of France and actually in excess of that of Belgium. But, measured either by pecuniary loss or real loss to the economic power of the country, the injury to her mercantile marine was enormous.

There remain the claims of Italy, Serbia, and Roumania for damage by invasion and of these and other countries, as for example Greece,[93]

for losses at sea. I will a.s.sume for the present argument that these claims rank against Germany, even when they were directly caused not by her but by her allies; but that it is not proposed to enter any such claims on behalf of Russia.[94] Italy's losses by invasion and at sea cannot be very heavy, and a figure of from $250,000,000 to $500,000,000 would be fully adequate to cover them. The losses of Serbia, although from a human point of view her sufferings were the greatest of all,[95]

are not measured _pecuniarily_ by very great figures, on account of her low economic development. Dr. Stamp (_loc. cit._) quotes an estimate by the Italian statistician Maroi, which puts the national wealth of Serbia at $2,400,000,000 or $525 per head,[96] and the greater part of this would be represented by land which has sustained no permanent damage.[97] In view of the very inadequate data for guessing at more than the _general magnitude_ of the legitimate claims of this group of countries, I prefer to make one guess rather than several and to put the figure for the whole group at the round sum of $1,250,000,000.

We are finally left with the following--

Belgium $ 2,500,000,000[98]

France 4,000,000,000 Great Britain 2,850,000,000 Other Allies 1,250,000,000 --------------- Total $10,600,000,000

I need not impress on the reader that there is much guesswork in the above, and the figure for France in particular is likely to be criticized. But I feel some confidence that the _general magnitude_, as distinct from the precise figures, is not hopelessly erroneous; and this may be expressed by the statement that a claim against Germany, based on the interpretation of the pre-Armistice engagements of the Allied Powers which is adopted above, would a.s.suredly be found to exceed $8,000,000,000 and to fall short of $15,000,000,000.

This is the amount of the claim which we were ent.i.tled to present to the enemy. For reasons which will appear more fully later on, I believe that it would have been a wise and just act to have asked the German Government at the Peace Negotiations to agree to a sum of $10,000,000,000 in final settlement, without further examination of particulars. This would have provided an immediate and certain solution, and would have required from Germany a sum which, if she were granted certain indulgences, it might not have proved entirely impossible for her to pay. This sum should have been divided up amongst the Allies themselves on a basis of need and general equity.

But the question was not settled on its merits.

II. _The Conference and the Terms of the Treaty_

I do not believe that, at the date of the Armistice, responsible authorities in the Allied countries expected any indemnity from Germany beyond the cost of reparation for the direct material damage which had resulted from the invasion of Allied territory and from the submarine campaign. At that time there were serious doubts as to whether Germany intended to accept our terms, which in other respects were inevitably very severe, and it would have been thought an unstatesmanlike act to risk a continuance of the war by demanding a money payment which Allied opinion was not then antic.i.p.ating and which probably could not be secured in any case. The French, I think, never quite accepted this point of view; but it was certainly the British att.i.tude; and in this atmosphere the pre-Armistice conditions were framed.

A month later the atmosphere had changed completely. We had discovered how hopeless the German position really was, a discovery which some, though not all, had antic.i.p.ated, but which no one had dared reckon on as a certainty. It was evident that we could have secured unconditional surrender if we had determined to get it.

But there was another new factor in the situation which was of greater local importance. The British Prime Minister had perceived that the conclusion of hostilities might soon bring with it the break-up of the political _bloc_ upon which he was depending for his personal ascendency, and that the domestic difficulties which would be attendant on demobilization, the turn-over of industry from war to peace conditions, the financial situation, and the general psychological reactions of men's minds, would provide his enemies with powerful weapons, if he were to leave them time to mature. The best chance, therefore, of consolidating his power, which was personal and exercised, as such, independently of party or principle, to an extent unusual in British politics, evidently lay in active hostilities before the prestige of victory had abated, and in an attempt to found on the emotions of the moment a new basis of power which might outlast the inevitable reactions of the near future. Within a brief period, therefore, after the Armistice, the popular victor, at the height of his influence and his authority, decreed a General Election. It was widely recognized at the time as an act of political immorality. There were no grounds of public interest which did not call for a short delay until the issues of the new age had a little defined themselves and until the country had something more specific before it on which to declare its mind and to instruct its new representatives. But the claims of private ambition determined otherwise.

For a time all went well. But before the campaign was far advanced Government candidates were finding themselves handicapped by the lack of an effective cry. The War Cabinet was demanding a further lease of authority on the ground of having won the war. But partly because the new issues had not yet defined themselves, partly out of regard for the delicate balance of a Coalition Party, the Prime Minister's future policy was the subject of silence or generalities. The campaign seemed, therefore, to fall a little flat. In the light of subsequent events it seems improbable that the Coalition Party was ever in real danger. But party managers are easily "rattled." The Prime Minister's more neurotic advisers told him that he was not safe from dangerous surprises, and the Prime Minister lent an ear to them. The party managers demanded more "ginger." The Prime Minister looked about for some.

On the a.s.sumption that the return of the Prime Minister to power was the primary consideration, the rest followed naturally. At that juncture there was a clamor from certain quarters that the Government had given by no means sufficiently clear undertakings that they were not going "to let the Hun off." Mr. Hughes was evoking a good deal of attention by his demands for a very large indemnity,[99] and Lord Northcliffe was lending his powerful aid to the same cause. This pointed the Prime Minister to a stone for two birds. By himself adopting the policy of Mr. Hughes and Lord Northcliffe, he could at the same time silence those powerful critics and provide his party managers with an effective platform cry to drown the increasing voices of criticism from other quarters.

The progress of the General Election of 1918 affords a sad, dramatic history of the essential weakness of one who draws his chief inspiration not from his own true impulses, but from the grosser effiuxions of the atmosphere which momentarily surrounds him. The Prime Minister's natural instincts, as they so often are, were right and reasonable. He himself did not believe in hanging the Kaiser or in the wisdom or the possibility of a great indemnity. On the 22nd of November he and Mr.

Bonar Law issued their Election Manifesto. It contains no allusion of any kind either to the one or to the other but, speaking, rather, of Disarmament and the League of Nations, concludes that "our first task must be to conclude a just and lasting peace, and so to establish the foundations of a new Europe that occasion for further wars may be for ever averted." In his speech at Wolverhampton on the eve of the Dissolution (November 24), there is no word of Reparation or Indemnity.

On the following day at Glasgow, Mr. Bonar Law would promise nothing.

"We are going to the Conference," he said, "as one of a number of allies, and you cannot expect a member of the Government, whatever he may think, to state in public before he goes into that Conference, what line he is going to take in regard to any particular question." But a few days later at Newcastle (November 29) the Prime Minister was warming to his work: "When Germany defeated France she made France pay. That is the principle which she herself has established. There is absolutely no doubt about the principle, and that is the principle we should proceed upon--that Germany must pay the costs of the war up to the limit of her capacity to do so." But he accompanied this statement of principle with many "words of warning" as to the practical difficulties of the case: "We have appointed a strong Committee of experts, representing every shade of opinion, to consider this question very carefully and to advise us. There is no doubt as to the justice of the demand. She ought to pay, she must pay as far as she can, but we are not going to allow her to pay in such a way as to wreck our industries." At this stage the Prime Minister sought to indicate that he intended great severity, without raising excessive hopes of actually getting the money, or committing himself to a particular line of action at the Conference. It was rumored that a high city authority had committed himself to the opinion that Germany could certainly pay $100,000,000,000 and that this authority for his part would not care to discredit a figure of twice that sum. The Treasury officials, as Mr. Lloyd George indicated, took a different view. He could, therefore, shelter himself behind the wide discrepancy between the opinions of his different advisers, and regard the precise figure of Germany's capacity to pay as an open question in the treatment of which he must do his best for his country's interests.

As to our engagements under the Fourteen Points he was always silent.

On November 30, Mr. Barnes, a member of the War Cabinet, in which he was supposed to represent Labor, shouted from a platform, "I am for hanging the Kaiser."

On December 6, the Prime Minister issued a statement of policy and aims in which he stated, with significant emphasis on the word _European_, that "All the European Allies have accepted the principle that the Central Powers must pay the cost of the war up to the limit of their capacity."

But it was now little more than a week to Polling Day, and still he had not said enough to satisfy the appet.i.tes of the moment. On December 8, the _Times_, providing as usual a cloak of ostensible decorum for the lesser restraint of its a.s.sociates, declared in a leader ent.i.tled "Making Germany Pay," that "The public mind was still bewildered by the Prime Minister's various statements." "There is too much suspicion,"

they added, "of influences concerned to let the Germans off lightly, whereas the only possible motive in determining their capacity to pay must be the interests of the Allies." "It is the candidate who deals with the issues of to-day," wrote their Political Correspondent, "who adopts Mr. Barnes's phrase about 'hanging the Kaiser' and plumps for the payment of the cost of the war by Germany, who rouses his audience and strikes the notes to which they are most responsive."

On December 9, at the Queen's Hall, the Prime Minister avoided the subject. But from now on, the debauchery of thought and speech progressed hour by hour. The grossest spectacle was provided by Sir Eric Geddes in the Guildhall at Cambridge. An earlier speech in which, in a moment of injudicious candor, he had cast doubts on the possibility of extracting from Germany the whole cost of the war had been the object of serious suspicion, and he had therefore a reputation to regain. "We will get out of her all you can squeeze out of a lemon and a bit more," the penitent shouted, "I will squeeze her until you can hear the pips squeak"; his policy was to take every bit of property belonging to Germans in neutral and Allied countries, and all her gold and silver and her jewels, and the contents of her picture-galleries and libraries, to sell the proceeds for the Allies' benefit. "I would strip Germany," he cried, "as she has stripped Belgium."

By December 11 the Prime Minister had capitulated. His Final Manifesto of Six Points issued on that day to the electorate furnishes a melancholy comparison with his program of three weeks earlier. I quote it in full:

"1. Trial of the Kaiser.

2. Punishment of those responsible for atrocities.

3. Fullest Indemnities from Germany.

4. Britain for the British, socially and industrially.

5. Rehabilitation of those broken in the war.

6. A happier country for all."

Here is food for the cynic. To this concoction of greed and sentiment, prejudice and deception, three weeks of the platform had reduced the powerful governors of England, who but a little while before had spoken not ign.o.bly of Disarmament and a League of Nations and of a just and lasting peace which should establish the foundations of a new Europe.

On the same evening the Prime Minister at Bristol withdrew in effect his previous reservations and laid down four principles to govern his Indemnity Policy, of which the chief were: First, we have an absolute right to demand the whole cost of the war; second, we propose to demand the whole cost of the war; and third, a Committee appointed by direction of the Cabinet believe that it can be done.[100] Four days later he went to the polls.

The Prime Minister never said that he himself believed that Germany could pay the whole cost of the war. But the program became in the mouths of his supporters on the hustings a great deal more than concrete. The ordinary voter was led to believe that Germany could certainly be made to pay the greater part, if not the whole cost of the war. Those whose practical and selfish fears for the future the expenses of the war had aroused, and those whose emotions its horrors had disordered, were both provided for. A vote for a Coalition candidate meant the Crucifixion of Anti-Christ and the a.s.sumption by Germany of the British National Debt.

It proved an irresistible combination, and once more Mr. George's political instinct was not at fault. No candidate could safely denounce this program, and none did so. The old Liberal Party, having nothing comparable to offer to the electorate, was swept out of existence.[101]

A new House of Commons came into being, a majority of whose members had pledged themselves to a great deal more than the Prime Minister's guarded promises. Shortly after their arrival at Westminster I asked a Conservative friend, who had known previous Houses, what he thought of them. "They are a lot of hard-faced men," he said, "who look as if they had done very well out of the war."

This was the atmosphere in which the Prime Minister left for Paris, and these the entanglements he had made for himself. He had pledged himself and his Government to make demands of a helpless enemy inconsistent with solemn engagements on our part, on the faith of which this enemy had laid down his arms. There are few episodes in history which posterity will have less reason to condone,--a war ostensibly waged in defense of the sanct.i.ty of international engagements ending in a definite breach of one of the most sacred possible of such engagements on the part of victorious champions of these ideals.[102]

Apart from other aspects of the transaction, I believe that the campaign for securing out of Germany the general costs of the war was one of the most serious acts of political unwisdom for which our statesmen have ever been responsible. To what a different future Europe might have looked forward if either Mr. Lloyd George or Mr. Wilson had apprehended that the most serious of the problems which claimed their attention were not political or territorial but financial and economic, and that the perils of the future lay not in frontiers or sovereignties but in food, coal, and transport. Neither of them paid adequate attention to these problems at any stage of the Conference. But in any event the atmosphere for the wise and reasonable consideration of them was hopelessly befogged by the commitments of the British delegation on the question of Indemnities. The hopes to which the Prime Minister had given rise not only compelled him to advocate an unjust and unworkable economic basis to the Treaty with Germany, but set him at variance with the President, and on the other hand with competing interests to those of France and Belgium. The clearer it became that but little could be expected from Germany, the more necessary it was to exercise patriotic greed and "sacred egotism" and s.n.a.t.c.h the bone from the juster claims and greater need of France or the well-founded expectations of Belgium.

Yet the financial problems which were about to exercise Europe could not be solved by greed. The possibility of _their_ cure lay in magnanimity.

Europe, if she is to survive her troubles, will need so much magnanimity from America, that she must herself practice it. It is useless for the Allies, hot from stripping Germany and one another, to turn for help to the United States to put the States of Europe, including Germany, on to their feet again. If the General Election of December, 1918, had been fought on lines of prudent generosity instead of imbecile greed, how much better the financial prospect of Europe might now be. I still believe that before the main Conference, or very early in its proceedings, the representatives of Great Britain should have entered deeply, with those of the United States, into the economic and financial situation as a whole, and that the former should have been authorized to make concrete proposals on the general lines (1) that all inter-allied indebtedness be canceled outright; (2) that the sum to be paid by Germany be fixed at $10,000,000,000; (3) that Great Britain renounce all claim to partic.i.p.ation in this sum and that any share to which she proves ent.i.tled be placed at the disposal of the Conference for the purpose of aiding the finances of the New States about to be established; (4) that in order to make some basis of credit immediately available an appropriate proportion of the German obligations representing the sum to be paid by her should be guaranteed by all parties to the Treaty; and (5) that the ex-enemy Powers should also be allowed, with a view to their economic restoration, to issue a moderate amount of bonds carrying a similar guarantee. Such proposals involved an appeal to the generosity of the United States. But that was inevitable; and, in view of her far less financial sacrifices, it was an appeal which could fairly have been made to her. Such proposals would have been practicable. There is nothing in them quixotic or Utopian. And they would have opened up for Europe some prospect of financial stability and reconstruction.