A most vulgar spectacle was offered by many of the English candidates, among whom were several members of the War Cabinet, who used language worthy of raving dervishes before crowds hypnotized by promises of the most impossible things.

To promise the electors that Germany should pay the cost of the War, to announce to those who had lost their senses that the Kaiser was to be hanged, to promise the arrest and punishment of the most guilty German officers, to prophesy the reduction to slavery of a Germany competing on sea and land, was certainly the easiest kind of electoral programme.  The numerous war-mutilated accepted it with much enthusiasm, and the people listened, open-mouthed, to the endless series of promises.

Hughes, who was at bottom in good faith, developed the thesis which he afterwards upheld at Paris with logical precision.  It was Germany’s duty to reimburse, without any limitation, the entire cost of the War:  damage to property, damage to persons, and war-cost.  He who has committed the wrong must make reparation for it to the extreme limits of his resources, and this principle, recognized by the jurists, requires that the total of the whole cost of the War fall upon the enemy nations.  Later on, Hughes, who was a sincere man, recognized that it was not possible to go beyond asking for reparation of the damages.

Lloyd George was dragged along by the necessity of not drawing away the mass of the electors from the candidates of his party.  Thus he was obliged on December 11, in his final manifesto, to announce not only the Kaiser’s trial and that of all those responsible for atrocities, but to promise the most extensive kind of indemnity from Germany and the compensation of all who had suffered by the War.  Speaking the same evening at Bristol, he promised to uphold the principle of the indemnity, and asserted the absolute right to demand from Germany payment for the costs of the War.

In England, where the illusion soon passed away, in France, where it has not yet been dissipated, the public has been allowed to believe that Germany can pay the greater part, if not the entire cost, of the War, or at least make compensation for the damage.

For many years I have studied the figures in relation to private wealth and the wealth of nations, and I have written at length on the subject.  I know how difficult it is to obtain by means of even approximate statistics results more or less near to the reality.  Nothing pained me more than to hear the facility with which politicians of repute spoke of obtaining an indemnity of hundreds of milliards.  When Germany expressed her desire to pay an indemnity in one agreed lump sum (a forfait) of one hundred milliards of gold marks (an indemnity she could never pay, so enormous is it), I saw statesmen, whom I imagined not deprived of intelligence, smile at the paltriness of the offer.  An indemnity of fifty milliards of gold marks, such as that proposed by Keynes, appeared absurd in its smallness.