indemnity payment and British industry would have been freed from taxation to the extent of the share of the indemnity received by Britain. It is true that Germany, by wiping out the value of her currency, has also wiped out her internal debt, incidentally ruining her investors; but taxes imposed for purposes of payments abroad have a much heavier weight than those which are merely collected to be paid out again at home; if Germany had to turn goods into dollars and relieved us from this uncomfortable duty laid on us by our debt to America, then with this double advantage British industry, if its organization and spirit were fit to carry on the tradition of those who had built it up, ought to have been able to deal so effectively with German competition that Germany could only have been able to pay the indemnity by supplying markets which Britain, for reasons entirely of her own, was prepared to leave her.
And surely it ought to have been obvious that the German competition which was thought so formidable, was not going to be made more so by the indemnity payment, because German industry was certain, whether an indemnity was imposed or no, to make every effort to sell goods all over the world.
But this was a time of curious delusions, and many people, even among those who were cry-
