THE NATIONAL REVIEW No. 522. AUGUST 1926 EPISODES OF THE MONTH THE Daily Mail has rendered conspicuous service to both hemispheres by breaking through the Conspiracy of Silence A Broken Conspiracy of Silence that had long enveloped their political and financial relations and forcing the two Governments primarily concerned at long last to put their cards on the table. We can understand that the enterprise of our contemporary should perturb those circles that seek to make a mystery of international problems either in order to conceal their own operations, or as a mask for the ineptitude that has jeopardized national interests. But we cannot for the life of us conceive why the campaign of education of the Daily Mail should be resented by the people on any shore of the Atlantic. No newspaper in the English-speaking world has laboured more consistently or insistently, not merely for Anglo-American friendship, but for every Anglo-American amenity, than the Daily Mail, and no American was ever heard to complain either in the days of Lord Northcliffe or of his successors that U.S.A. received anything less than fair play in the Northcliffe or Rothermere Press. Indeed, some Englishmen have occasionally thought that in their enthusiasm for Anglo-American understanding our contemporaries were occasionally inclined to underrate the influence and virulence of the anti-British elements on the other side, which loom so large and count for so much in the eyes of practical politicians in Washington, and frequently exercise a preponderant part in determining the attitude and policy of the Administration of the day. To represent the Daily Mail as seeking to make mischief between the United States and Great Britain in calling attention to their actual financial relations is simply ludicrous in the face VOL. LXXXVII 51 of its unimpeachable record as an apostle and advocate of Anglo-American co-operation. It is indeed only those who stand to gain by keeping the American and British people in the dark concerning facts that have been withheld from the former and obscured to the latter who can and do resent the popular discussion of the annual tribute that under existing arrangements two generations of impoverished Britons are committed to pay to a country that is proud of being "a paradise of plutocrats." No one would be heard to suggest that a rich man should forgo his lawful debt simply because he is rich, any more than that a poor man should be absolved from payment merely because he is poor. No such suggestion has been heard in this country. No one denies that owing to a blunder of the British Government in 1918-we owe the Americans the money Our Annual are now paying them to the tune of between £30,000,000 and £40,000,000 per annum, being equivalent to about 1s. in the £ income tax from every individual income taxpayer. We can grin and bear it. Some of our financiers positively revel in a transaction they anticipate will bring more grist to their mills than it will take away, while wealthy Highbrows, to whom ls. in the £ is an insignificent sum, applaud it as evidence of our "moral superiority" over other nations who boggle at placing their heads in the American Chancery. Indeed, but for our companions in misfortune in Europe, who are clearly unable to discharge obligations that they never supposed the United States would condescend to press, it might have been difficult to arouse the interest of the British public as the Daily Mail has succeeded in doing. There would certainly have been no chance of constraining the British Chancellor of the Exchequer and the American Secretary of the Treasury to enter the lists with the results so keenly canvassed in their respective countries. The National Review is usually regarded as a zealous upholder of British interests-material and otherwise-but we have never favoured the policy of "dunning" the Allies who fought by our side in a common cause; our programme was to make the enemy, as the wanton aggressor in the World War, pay enough to the nations she had attacked and devastated, and pari passu to Great Britain she had half-ruined, to preclude the necessity of our seeking a single franc, lira or any other coin from any Power, great or small, that joined in repelling Kultur's assault on Civilization. Unhappily, although the policy of "making Germany pay was exploited by Mr. Lloyd George and his Coalition colleagues for the purpose of winning the General Election of 1918 (which they insisted upon in order that they might be fortified by an adequate mandate at the forthcoming Paris Peace Conference), the moment our electorate had been tricked out of their votes by Politicians who had never contemplated "delivering the goods," His Majesty's Ministers, to their eternal shame and to our lasting injury, forthwith devoted themselves to the "magnanimous " policy of sparing German pockets which they were pledged to "search." THIS programme of transferring the main financial War burdens from enemy to Allied shoulders was partly inspired by Highbrows with their heads in the clouds Making the who ministered to Mr. Lloyd George's vanity Allies Pay by christening him "the Modern Castlereagh," partly by International Financiers in London and New York with both feet firmly fixed on Mother Earth. Not a few of them are of German or Jewish birth or extraction who had been compelled to repress their German sympathies until the Armistice. All were convinced that they stood to make more money out of restored and prosperous Germany than out of France, who, even reconstructed, would offer less opportunities to Lombard Street and Wall Street. These are the keys to the tragedy that has developed apace ever since. To spare Germany meant to punish Great Britain and France. The former was punished industrially-the latter financially. Is it certain that our lot was the lightest ? Time will show. If to foresee is to govern, there was no Government in Downing Street during the Coalition, but simply a collection of bats or moles. These "first-class brains" had not even the nous-when President Wilson outrageously suggested that we and our Allies should waive all claim to War Costs from Germany-to reply: "In any event we propose to transfer Great Britain's American Debt to Germany, and it is to the Germans that the United States must look for repayment, though in the event of the President waiving such claim, as he invites us to waive War Costs, the British Government would offer no objection." Politicians who vaunted their intellects, who passed for being intelligent, and regarded themselves as indispensable, were above thinking of anything so obvious. Ministers without memories forgot the existence of the American Debt. They were too busy fooling themselves and most other people over President Wilson's Covenant of the League of Nations. They were outraged by any mention of anything so mundane as dollars. Some of the sapients were heard to declare that the Americans would be 'insulted' by any reference to our debt to them, which they regarded as their relatively small contribution to the common sacrifice of which the brunt had fallen on the Associated Powers, and there was, of course, no question of repayment." Such is the wisdom of Responsible Statesmen. Ultimately, when it was too late and Germany had been effectively "spared" every mark of War Costs, Downing Street awoke to the unpleasant fact that so far from forgoing the loans the Allies had been compelled to raise in U.S.A., because President Wilson had been "too proud to prepare," the Washington Politicians were out to collect the uttermost farthing that could be squeezed from America's foreign debtors. 66 THE Coalition became tardily conscious of being "dunned from Washington. We had never dreamed of "dunning our Allies-in the jargon of politicians it was "Duns" "unthinkable" in British eyes that we should impose tribute on devastated nations whom our Government had prevented from recouping themselves from the Germans, who could well afford such reparation. Having aided the Americans to get the post-war world into this ghastly mess, His Majesty's Ministers sought to mitigate the consequences |