NOW CAN GERMANY PAY?

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 191, 14 July 1916, Page 1 (Supplement)

NOW CAN GERMANY PAY?

If we are to boycott German trade after the war, how is Germany to pay ihe huge 'indemnity we expect to from lier ? This is the question which Mr Francis Gribble discusses in an exhaustive article in the "Nineteenth Century " The view of the man in the fetreet, and of the adherents of the AntiGerman League, that a rigorous boycott of German wares is compatible with the extraction of a largo indemnity from the German Exchequer, is, he says, ridiculous. It is like a proposal to cut off a man's liands as a preparation for employing him in hard manual labour. If Germany is to pay an indemnity Germany must not lo deprived of tho means of earning it. On the contrary, a plan for making the very most of Gentian labour, machinery and resources must bo carefully thought out; and Mr Gribble';; article is designed as a contribution to that branch of the subject. I:> short, tie says that the only way ct providing for the payment will be to carve Germany —and perhaps also Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria—into spheres of influences Tine Italian, Servian, and Montenegrin spheres of influence would presumably be in the south-east, whereas in Germany itself there would lie British, French, Belgian, Russian, and Japanese spheres. Only by th' 3 device of establishing industrial sphere* of influence and distributing industrial monopolies can Gorman trade be put on such a basis that it will be possible tc employ German labour (jpr the fulfilrecnt of German obligations, without underselling British, French and Belgian labour; and it was precisely -'n this way tnat Baron vou Zedlitz-Ne.i-kirch proposed to extract a German indemnity from France. The Gorman working classes, far from losing, would almost certainly gain a great deal from this financing of German trade instead of boycotting it, thus using Getman labour instead of wasting it. Ali the profits, after adequate wages had been pftid, would be devoted to the gradual paying off of those tremendous liabilities which a wanton war of aggression has incurred. The problem involved is by no means easy of solution, but whatever may bo the policy ultimately adopted, it must surely be such as to ensure that Germany shall not be able to again build up her armies :-.t the expense of peaceful nation?.