BOYCOTT OR INDEMNITY?

Taranaki Daily News, 28 February 1919, Page 4

BOYCOTT OR INDEMNITY?

Concluding a series of articles in the Morning I'ost, Mr. Harold Cox asks: Is it better to maintain an economic boycott against. the Germans as a visible and terrible punishment for their crimes, or to permit them once again to enter the comity of nations, so that tlicy can earn the means with which to pay an indemnity? Frankly, that question is not easy to answer. There is much to be said for the view that a people that has so wantonly outraged the- recognised code of contemporary civilisation ought to be treated by the rest of the world, for a generation at least, as outcasts and pariahs. But in practice this would be diflicult. In addition to losing the financial advantages of an indemnity paid into our Exchequer yeai' by year, we should provoke sentimental objections both in Britain and in the United States, and commercial objections from some of our allies who are eager to resume trading relations with Germany at the earliest possible moment. England is commercially strong enough to dispense with German trade; Italy is not. Nor is it very easy to surmount the difficulty of the neutral nations who want to trade both with Germany and with her enemies. On the whole, the balance of advantage probably lies on the side of an indemnity; and we must face the fact that if

the indemnity is to be at all adequate we shall have to concede to Germany a very large liberty of trading with the outer world. This undoubtedly involves future danger. A strictly boycotted Germany would be a Germany too poor to be dangerous, but a Germany that is permitted to trade in order to pay an indemnity will be a Germany on the road to renewed economic strength, which at the first convenient opportunity she will certainly use to make another bid for world domination. Therefore, if we abandon the policy of the boycott in favor of an indemnity, we must for the suke of future security, apart from all other considerations, insist that the annual indemnity is so heavy that when it has been paid the Germans have nothing to spend upon fresh military preparations. Even on the most favorable calculations what she can physically pay is immensely less than what she morally owes.