be devoted to the recovery of the economic strength of the Fatherland.
More than a year later—in October 1922—Mr. McKenna was discoursing on the subject of Reparations and International debts, at an American Bankers' Association Convention, held in New York. He reminded his hearers of the results of the payment of the French indemnity after 1871, and Bismarck's observation that the next time he defeated France he would insist upon paying an indemnity; and went on to show that in spite of full employment and hard work in Germany and the advantage given to the German exporter by the falling mark ("so much so that there is hardly anywhere a manufacturer, producing goods for export, who does not complain of German competition") German exports "are still barely equal to imports" and "the conclusion seems inevitable that Germany has no present capacity to obtain a surplus from the export of goods." Further, that if she could pay she could only do so by exports of manufactured goods, in the teeth of competition, and the result would be that she and her competitors would work longer for less wages, cut profits and reduce imports, and that a "general lowering of the standard of life" would result.
