May 20.
We are still living in the land of promise as regards German payments under the Treaty. But the San Remo conference, Mr. Lloyd George's subsequent speech in the House of Commons and the Hythe statement published yesterday have made the promise just a little less nebulous than before. We are told that the British and French Governments recognized that reparation for losses and damage due to war must in the general interest be obtained as soon as possible, and that "'it is desirable that Germany be put in a position to regain her financial autonomy by speedy fulfilment of her obligations.' In other words, the sooner Germany pays up, the sooner she will be able to put her finances in order. This is a decidedly more reassuring statement of the position than the converse doctrine hinted at by those who are always preaching that the treaty must be revised. Experts are, therefore, to be appointed immediately to decide what Germany must pay and how.
his is satisfactory enough from the Allies' point of view, but we have yet to hear what Germany will say. The situation, in fact, reminds one rather of the story of the two men studying a notice board announcing that ''This dog doesn't bite.'" "Yes,"' says one man, 'I know the dog doesn't bite and so do you, but does the dog know it' Do the German people know—in the sense that they recognize it as an obligation which they are prepared to carry out—that they have to pay up for all the millions of pounds worth of damage they have done in their barefaced attempt to steal other people's property? Conversely, as supplying some answer to this question, what do we really know of the internal state of Germany, of her temper, of the survival or otherwise of the old autocracy? There is no country in Europe, not even excepting Russia, of which we hear such contradictory reports. The former ''Times'' correspondent in Berlin, writing in the third week of March from that city, and with certainly ride experience of Germany, tells us that the failure of the Kapp and von Luttwitz coup demonstrated the hopelessness of militarist reaction for tHe present rather than the likelihood of any
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.