Progress toward Principle
,yune I9, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL i75 takers in 192o were not required to ask questions re-garding employment, it is twenty years since we have ~'ad any information on the subject more conclusive than...
...It is said that his rise was due to a chance discovery, by a supe- rior, of his skill in giving out financial news to the press...
...A multitude of minor but quite o~inous difficulties were removed by the persistence a'td tact of Mr...
...And the agree- Bent just signed calls for a total of $27,ooo,ooo,ooo, i/~ which sum are included the charges incurred under the Dawes plan, the Allied debts and the costs of werse armies of occupation...
...One proposal is already been made--the suggestion, which comes from Great Britain but which the French will, in all fi~elihood, second with alacrity: to evacuate the Rhine .9erritories...
...When this has been done, reductions in trmament may be hoped for, with a markedly benefi- ent effect upon budgets...
...The spectacle was a l:,'tle vague and hard to follow even through the Paris papers, "which reported everything doggedly and in detail...
...Young and Dr...
...But the significance of the agreement finally "ontrived is rather easy to determine if one follows ghe history of reparations since the close of the war...
...Thus his famous article written for the Journal de Gen~ve during 1926 , but not published until recently, has been widely accepted as "expressive of the German mentality...
...There is no justice in prohibiting Germany from having colonies, while France has not even a sufficient number of inhabitants to cultivate its own territory and is obliged to import hundreds of thousands of Italians...
...Italy, on the other hand, has the right to ask for colonies...
...PROGRESS TOWARD PRINCIPLE F ~OR weeks the members of the Experts' Committee J have toiled and argued...
...By , x92o, however, the Spa conference had already scaled the German debt from infinity to $58,000,000,000...
...At the end of ten years ?urope may have recovered to such an extent that a new adjustment of its finances will be possible, One of the most interesting aspects of the confer- ence has been the contrast between the personalities of Mr...
...The latter is, in more than one respect, an index to those aspects of the contemporary German mind which do not often re-ceive attention...
...It is because of his representative importance, be- cause of his bold insistence upon what his countrymen conceive of as economic fact, that Dr...
...for while the pressure upon ~ermany will be heavy, a victory over extravagant ciauvinism has been gained and the way is clear for removal of irritating conditions...
...England has 2,ooo,ooo unemployed citizens, but she feeds them on the income from a vast colonial empire into which her unemployed do not wish to go...
...There is only one solution pos- siblemto permit us to divert our unemployed to other territory...
...In this he voiced the opinion that Poland's use of the Danzig corridor is a blunder for which all eastern Europe must pay heavily, as well as a crime against the Reich...
...Germany is now, even more clearly than before the war, Europe's "unknown quantity...
...3,t Versailles there was no limit to the claims pressed t~gainst the defeated Germans...
...She is entitled to them as we are, for the same reasons...
...and with what are we ex-pected to feed them...
...The "debt" properly g 0,~ called has been scaled down to the sum of $19,ooo,ooo,ooo, present value...
...More important, however, are the following remarks regarding German colonies, a subject which Dr...
...Schacht's career it is certainly true, has been based to a considerable extent upon his willingness to see the problems con-fronting his country as a whole...
...He represents the type of public ser- vant whom the Reich may be said to have graduated out of the ranks of the old bureaucracy...
...A~zcordingly one may a~ume with reasonable security that during the decade ,"tO follow a great deal of progress toward "reconcilia- "t'bn" will be effected...
...Indeed many of his brushes with hostile opinion have been due less to his decisions as a banker (among which his opposition to municipal loans was perhaps the most fiercely debated) than to his insistence upon political "opin- ions...
...Her political and economic actualities cannot be ignored, and co-operation with rather than opposition to her seems the formula for general safety...
...Young...
...So many people then believed in a dismembered Reich that it seemed quite r4atural to exact remuneration for every cow and cat Chat had died during the period of hostilities...
...Then came the Dawes sys- m, which judiciously ignored totals...
...Schacht discoursed upon at Paris to no avail: "Economically speaking, Germany cannot get on without colonies...
...Kbout a year later currency and business had both agged, and the Reparations Commission had fixed ~,~he liability at $32,ooo,ooo,ooona drop of nearly ne-half inside of a year...
...We cannot well afford to miss this opportunity of getting information so necessary in the most accurate ~nd cheapest possible way...
...The difficulties of Europe must be faced in common or suffered to triumph...
...To the credit of the Allied nations it must be said that they have come nearer to realizing this fact...
...Here is a job for the census of 193o...
...he payments due annually have been fixed, and the ~mmittee has agreed upon a mechanism--somewhat :.implicated, it is true, but scientific in principle--for Ja~mdling the money...
...Schacht...
...Schacht has made so deep an impression upon current public opin- ion...
...yune I9, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL i75 takers in 192o were not required to ask questions re-garding employment, it is twenty years since we have ~'ad any information on the subject more conclusive than estimates based on inferences from the biennial .ensus of manufactures, and on the increase or decrease 3f payrolls...
...In all probability this arrangement will stand for ~n years, providing no unforeseen catastrophe occurs...
...It is," he declared, "foolish to believe that eastern Europe can endure in the form it has now taken...
...Soon he had become a powerful executive who owed as much to the political influences then operative as to his purely financial skill...
...We, too, have our people out of work...
Vol. 10 • June 1929 • No. 7
