Intelligence of the good or evil fortunes of the Experts'
Report is still the most important news of Europe. It is really pathetic to see how anxiously and how hopefully ordinary men and women are watching its progress. Europe stirs in its bad dream. Is this really the dawn, or will night descend remorselessly again ? The reception of the Report in France and Germany has cer- tainly been surprisingly good. In Germany the Govern- ment, after officially accepting it in a Note to the Allies, has energetically defended its action against the in- evitable attacks by the Nationalists. The spokesman of the Nationalists is Herr Helfferich, whose financial reputation has apparently suffered not at all from the fact that he is universally held to have been the strongest advocate of the policy of inflation which ruined Germany. He asserts that the Experts' plan is a " new Versailles " and that Germany will go to final ruin if she once more accepts a liability which she knows she cannot meet. Herr Stresemann has answered him in a vigorous article in the Zeit, pointing out that Germany will gain, at any rate, the first great essential of recovery, the restoration of her economic unity, by the acceptance of the Report, and that she can gain it in no other way.
