period prior to May, 1921, and that the value of any payments in kind with which she may be able to furnish the Allies under the Treaty in the form of coal, dyes, timber, or other materials will have to be returned to her to enable her to pay for imports essential to her existence.124
The Reparation Commission can, therefore, expect no addition from other sources to the sum of from $500,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 with which we have hypothetically credited it after the realization of Germany's immediately transferable wealth, the calculation of the credits due to Germany under the Treaty, and the discharge of the cost of the Armies of Occupation. As Belgium has secured a private agreement with France, the United States, and Great Britain, outside the Treaty, by which she is to receive, towards satisfaction of her claims, the first $500,000,000 available for Reparation, the upshot of the whole matter is that Belgium may possibly get her $500,000,000 by May, 1921, but none of the other Allies are likely to secure by that date any contribution worth speaking of. At any rate, it would be very imprudent for Finance Ministers to lay their plans on any other hypothesis.
3. Annual Payments spread over a Term of Years
It is evident that Germany's pre-war capacity to pay an annual foreign tribute has not been unaffected by the almost total loss of her colonies, her overseas connections, her mercantile marine, and her foreign properties, by the cession of ten per cent of her territory and population, of one-third of her coal and of three-quarters of her iron ore, by two million casualties amongst men in the prime of life, by the starvation of her people for four years, by the burden of a vast war debt, by the depreciation of her currency to less than one-seventh its former value, by the disruption of her allies and their territories, by Revolution at home and Bolshevism on her