HKB
the pockets of the people. But it may gradually leak over the frontier by the agency of private speculators, and thus indirectly benefit the German exchange position as a whole.
[119] The Allies made the supply of foodstuffs to Germany during the Armistice, mentioned above, conditional on the provisional transfer to them of the greater part of the Mercantile Marine, to be operated by them for the purpose of shipping foodstuffs to Europe generally, and to Germany in particular. The reluctance of the Germans to agree to this was productive of long and dangerous delays in the supply of food, but the abortive Conferences of TrËves and Spa (January 16, February 14-16, and March 4-5, 1919) were at last followed by the Agreement of Brussels (March 14, 1919). The unwillingness of the Germans to conclude was mainly due to the lack of any absolute guarantee on the part of the Allies that, if they surrendered the ships, they would get the food. But assuming reasonable good faith on the part of the latter (their behavior in respect of certain other clauses of the Armistice, however, had not been impeccable and gave the enemy some just grounds for suspicion), their demand was not an improper one; for without the German ships the business of transporting the food would have been difficult, if not impossible, and the German ships surrendered or their equivalent were in fact almost wholly employed in transporting food to Germany itself. Up to June 30, 1919, 176 German ships of 1,025,388 gross tonnage had been surrendered, to the Allies in accordance with the Brussels Agreement.
[120] The amount of tonnage transferred may be rather greater and the value per ton rather less. The aggregate value involved is not likely, however, to be less than $500,000,000 or greater than $750,000,000.
[121] This census was carried out by virtue of a Decree of August 23, 1918. On March 22, 1917, the German Government acquired complete control over the utilization of foreign securities in German possession; and in May, 1917, it began to exercise these powers for the mobilization of certain Swedish, Danish, and Swiss securities.
[122] 1892. Schmoller $2,500,000,000 1892. Christians 3,250,000,000 1893-4. Koch 3,000,000,000 1905. v. Halle 4,000,000,000[A] 1913. Helfferich 5,000,000,000[B] 1914. Ballod 6,250,000,000 1914. Pistorius 6,250,000,000 1919. Hans David 5,250,000,000[C]
[A] Plus $2,500,000 for investments other than securities.
[B] Net investments, i.e. after allowance for property in Germany owned abroad. This may also be the case with some of the other estimates.
[C] This estimate, given in the Weltwirtschaftszeitung (June 13, 1919), is an estimate of the value of Germany's foreign investments as at the outbreak of war.
[123] I have made no deduction for securities in the ownership of Alsace-Lorrainers and others who have now ceased to be German nationals.
[124] In all these estimates, I am conscious of being driven by a fear of overstating the case against the Treaty, of giving figures in excess of my own real judgment. There is a great difference between putting down on paper fancy estimates of Germany's resources and actually extracting contributions in the form of cash. I do not myself believe that the Reparation Commission will secure real resources from the above items by May, 1921, even as great as the lower of the two figures given above.
[125] The Treaty (see Art. 114) leaves it very dubious how far the Danish Government is under an obligation to make payments to the Reparation Commission in respect of its acquisition of Schleswig. They might, for instance, arrange for various offsets such as the value of the mark notes held by the inhabitants of ceded areas. In any case the amount of money involved is quite small. The Danish Government is raising a loan for $33,000,000 (kr. 120,000,000) for the joint purposes of "taking over Schleswig's share of the German debt, for buying German public property, for helping the Schleswig population, and for settling the currency question."