Germany, say the French, must not be allowed to forget
her due payments, but, if she pays them into the Bank for International Settlements, France will not insist upon any money being paid out to her. If the marks stay there, no damage will be done to German credit or exchange. France is even willing that they should be used to support actively German credit. That is no small concession and will involve sacrifices at home. At someone else's request, plainly, France asked that some central European countries should participate in the support of those marks, but this has not been allowed. The doubt that must be strongest, though it does not appear to be uppermost, is whether debts remitted for a year will ever be collected again. We feel that if the world reaps prosperity and finds in a moratorium happy relief, it will not after a year's ease thrust its shoulders again beneath a yoke that it has found galling. Why should it ? But we should well understand the French insisting, again en principe, that the future renewal of payments should be publicly recognized now as inevitable. France is making no kind of stubborn contest over the proposals, and she has the Secretary of the United States Treasury at hand in Paris to guide and perhaps to give a little push forward sometimes. We shall be very deeply disappointed if all is not duly agreed, just at the last moment.
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