HOW FRITZ BENEFITS.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 4015, 15 June 1920, Page 2

HOW FRITZ BENEFITS.

Here are the reparation terms oi J 1919: Within two years, £1,000,00(1,- j (100 in gold, goods, ships, or other forms of payment. By May 1, 1921, iionds to the amount of £1,000,000,----000, £2,000,000,000 more by 1920, and an additional £2,000,000,000 on terms lo be lived later. Compensation for all damages caused to civilians (by forced labour, levies, acts _ of cruelty," bombardments, etc.). Ships destroyed to be replaced ton for ton. Animals, machinery, ctc/tlostroyod or carried away to be replaced, and material required for reconstruction to bo furnished. Under Clemcnceau, France forced Berlin to comply Avith every term, but since the veteran retired Fritz has been quick to take advantage of slackness and dissention in the ranks of the Allies. Can Germany afford to pay up? Undoubtedly. Wo had the striking example of what a nation could do under the pressure of a Avar indemnity in the quick clearance France made of the heavy impost made upon __lier by the German conquerors of 1870. France Avas able to.make that quick recovery partly because Germany bad lopped off 'her extravagant monarchy, under the last of the Napoleons. Noav tho Allies have done a like service fertile Germans, only the advantage is much greater for Fritz than it Avas for Pierre, because the Hohenzollern dynasty was the most expensive and expansive on earth. It takes only a moment's thought to realise hoiv tremendously Fritz the taxpayer gains through the Allies cutting down this upas tree and all its branches and parasites, avlio were bleeding the Fatherland white. Then the destruction of the military machine, the annihilation of that still more extravagant engine, the Navy (and Fritz never was a first-class nian-o'-wars-man), and tho eradication of conscription', which was a tremendous dram on the industrial life of the late Empire—surely these are reforms.effected by the Allies for which Fritz of to-day should be truly thankful. and as the result of Avhich his son avill realise what true" liberty of -the sublet means. The ccouoojics in. the body politic should also provide even a surplus over the amount rightly demand|j.| as indemnities by the ■■' MWs which suffered \o severely through, tn*. wanton adventtii-p into wilful ; which practically'?,, the whole cal ] people of Germanyiof thei present^; 4, oration willingly (filtered at of their ambitious* overlords. -^