For this reason the question of Inter-Allied indebtedness is closely bound up with the intense popular feeling amongst the European Allies on the question of indemnities,—­a feeling which is based, not on any reasonable calculation of what Germany can, in fact, pay, but on a well-founded appreciation of the unbearable financial situation in which these countries will find themselves unless she pays.  Take Italy as an extreme example.  If Italy can reasonably be expected to pay $4,000,000,000, surely Germany can and ought to pay an immeasurably higher figure.  Or if it is decided (as it must be) that Austria can pay next to nothing, is it not an intolerable conclusion that Italy should be loaded with a crushing tribute, while Austria escapes?  Or, to put it slightly differently, how can Italy be expected to submit to payment of this great sum and see Czecho-Slovakia pay little or nothing?  At the other end of the scale there is the United Kingdom.  Here the financial position is different, since to ask us to pay $4,000,000,000 is a very different proposition from asking Italy to pay it.  But the sentiment is much the same.  If we have to be satisfied without full compensation from Germany, how bitter will be the protests against paying it to the United States.  We, it will be said, have to be content with a claim against the bankrupt estates of Germany, France, Italy, and Russia, whereas the United States has secured a first mortgage upon us.  The case of France is at least as overwhelming.  She can barely secure from Germany the full measure of the destruction of her countryside.  Yet victorious France must pay her friends and Allies more than four times the indemnity which in the defeat of 1870 she paid Germany.  The hand of Bismarck was light compared with that of an Ally or of an Associate.  A settlement of Inter-Ally indebtedness is, therefore, an indispensable preliminary to the peoples of the Allied countries facing, with other than a maddened and exasperated heart, the inevitable truth about the prospects of an indemnity from the enemy.

It might be an exaggeration to say that it is impossible for the European Allies to pay the capital and interest due from them on these debts, but to make them do so would certainly be to impose a crushing burden.  They may be expected, therefore, to make constant attempts to evade or escape payment, and these attempts will be a constant source of international friction and ill-will for many years to come.  A debtor nation does not love its creditor, and it is fruitless to expect feelings of goodwill from France, Italy, and Russia towards this country or towards America, if their future development is stifled for many years to come by the annual tribute which they must pay us.  There will be a great incentive to them to seek their friends in other directions, and any future rupture of peaceable relations will always carry with it the enormous advantage of escaping the payment of external debts, if, on the other hand, these great debts are forgiven, a stimulus will be given to the solidarity and true friendliness of the nations lately associated.