It
is more than the country needs.
What is more, if the English want coal they propose to buy it in
an ordinary decent way from a Christian coal-dealer in their own
country. They do not purpose to ruin their own coal industry for
the sake of building up the prosperity of the German nation.
What I say of coal is applied with equal force to any offers of food,
grain, oil, petroleum, gas, or any other natural product. Payment in
any of these will be sternly refused. Even now it is all the British
farmers can do to live and for some it is more. Many of them are
having to sell off their motors and pianos and to send their sons to
college to work. At the same time, the German producer by depressing
the mark further and further is able to work fourteen hours a day.
This argument may not be quite correct but I take it as I find it in
the London Press. Whether I state it correctly or not, it is quite
plain that the problem is insoluble. That is all that is needed in
first class politics.
A really good question like the German reparation question will go
on for a century. Undoubtedly in the year 2000 A.D., a British
Chancellor of the Exchequer will still be explaining that the
government is fully resolved that Germany shall pay to the last
farthing (cheers): but that ministers have no intention of allowing
the German payment to take a form that will undermine British
industry (wild applause): that the German indemnity shall be so
paid that without weakening the power of the Germans.
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