British onlookers may be forgiven for feeling a little puzzled.
It is surely one policy to demand, as America has done, a share of the- reparations which are collected' under the authority of the Treaty and another policy to say that America has nothing whatever to do with the Treaty. It may be argued, of course, that the Dawes scheme is not the Treaty ; but with perhaps better logic it may be argued that the signatories of the Treaty merely put the task of collecting reparations in com- mission when they agreed to the Dawes scheme and that the ultimate authority is that of the Treaty as much as ever it was. All such arguments, if the problem is treated tactfully, may turn out to have nothing more than an abstract importance. That is what we hope. If America comes back to Europe in practice we do not care in the least under what banner she comes.
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