Some contemporary plans for the reconstruction of Europe err in being too paternal or too complicated; also, sometimes, in being too pessimistic. The patients need neither drugs nor surgery, but healthy and natural surroundings in which they can exert their own recuperative powers. Therefore a good plan must be in the main _negative_; it must consist in getting rid of shackles, in simplifying the situation, in canceling futile but injurious entanglements. At present every one is faced by obligations which they cannot meet. Until the problem set to the Finance Ministers of Europe is a _possible_ one, there can be little incentive to energy or to the exercise of skill. But if the situation was made such that an insolvent country could have only itself to blame, then the highest integrity and the most accomplished financial technique would, in each separate country, have its chance. I seek by the proposals of this chapter, not to prescribe a solution, but to create a situation in which a solution is possible. In their main substance, therefore, my suggestions are not novel. The now familiar project of the cancelation, in part or in their entirety, of the Reparation and Inter–allied Debts, is a large and unavoidable feature of them. But those who are not prepared for these measures must not pretend to a serious interest in the Reconstruction of Europe. In so far as such cancelation or abatement involves concessions by Great Britain, an Englishman can write without embarrassment and with some knowledge of the tendency of popular opinion in his own country. But where concessions by the United States are concerned he is in more difficulty. The attitude of a section of the American press furnishes an almost irresistible temptation to deal out the sort of humbug (or discrete half–truths) which are believed to promote cordiality between nations; it is easy and terribly respectable; and what is much worse, it may even do good where frankness would do harm. I pursue the opposite course, with a doubting and uneasy conscience, yet supported (not only in this chapter but throughout my book) by the hope, possibly superstitious, that openness does good in the long run, even when it makes trouble at first.