The French wireless messages are doing a real service in publishing the evidence accruing day by day of Germany's industrial revival. the last few days we have had proof of the abundance of her coal output, of the activity of her steel foundries, and that she is actually preparing to sell machinery to China which she owes France. What one would now! like to hear of is that she is being made to return, fully and promptly, to the countries she invaded what she stole from them. What we actually hear, however, is that Mr. Lloyd George and the Belgian Premier are again conferring about the precise extent of the reparations to be exacted. Supposing Germany had been the victor in the autumn of 1918, should we all have waited two years to know what we had to pay and repay? There would have been a German army of occupation in every conquered capital—at that capital's expense—until "the last farthing had been extorted; and the notion of Germany considering how much we could afford to pay (as the Allies have thoughtfully considered of her) is simply laughable. We are not vindictive, but we remember clearly that France and Belgium unjustly suffered ineredible wrongs at Germany's hands, and we see no reason why she should not be made to right them. She has notoriously not done so yet: and in the disgust that is generally felt with the Peace Treaty, and under the immediate menace of Bolshevism, there appears some danger of her wickednesses being forgotten and of her escaping the reparation she ought to make.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.