The fear of hunger was so deeply rooted in the child that it collected stores instead of eating the food: a misguided animal instinct made the dread of hunger worse than the actual pangs.'" Yet there are many persons apparently in whose opinion justice requires that such beings should pay tribute until they are forty or fifty years of age in relief of the British taxpayer.
The figures for the United Kingdom are as follows: Monthly Average Net Imports $1,000 Exports $1,000 Excess of Imports $1,000 1913 274,650 218,850 55,800 1914 250,485 179,465 71,020 Jan.-Mar. 1919 547,890 245,610 302,280 April-June 1919 557,015 312,315 244,700 July-Sept. 1919 679,635 344,315 335,320 But this excess is by no means so serious as it looks; for with the present high freight earnings of the mercantile marine the various "invisible" exports of the United Kingdom are probably even higher than they were before the war, and may average at least $225,000,000 monthly.
President Wilson was mistaken in suggesting that the supervision of Reparation payments has been entrusted to the League of Nations. As I pointed out in Chapter V., whereas the League is invoked in regard to most of the continuing economic and territorial provisions of the Treaty, this is not the case as regards Reparation, over the problems and modifications of which the Reparation Commission is supreme without appeal of any kind to the League of Nations.
These Articles, which provide safeguards against the outbreak of war between members of the League and also between members and non-members, are the solid achievement of the Covenant. These Articles make substantially less probable a war between organized Great Powers such as that of 1914. This alone should commend the League to all men.