_Belgium_ is entitled at present to 8 per cent of the receipts, which under the London Settlement would amount to 280 million gold marks per annum on assumption (_a_) and 368 million on assumption (_b_). Under the new proposal she will receive 180 million gold marks per annum and will gain in certainty what she loses in possible receipts. The satisfaction of her existing priority should be adjusted by mutual agreement between herself and France. _Italy_ would gain immensely. She is entitled to 10 per cent of the receipts under the London Settlement (together with some claims on problematical receipts from Austria and Bulgaria); that is to say, 326 million gold marks per annum on assumption (_a_) and 460 million on assumption (_b_). But these sums are far below the annual charge of her obligations towards the United Kingdom and the United States, which, converted into gold marks on the same basis as that employed above in the case of France, amounts to 1000 million gold marks per annum. III. _The Assistance of New States_ I have reserved above, out of the claims of Great Britain, a sum of one milliard gold marks, with the object, not that she should retain this sum for herself, but that she should use it to ease the financial problems of two states for which she has a certain responsibility, namely Austria and Poland. _Austria’s_ problems are well known and attract a general sympathy. The Viennese were not made for tragedy; the world feels that, and there is none so bitter as to wish ill to the city of Mozart. Vienna has been the capital of degenerate greatness, but, released from imperial temptations, she is now free to fulfil her true rôle of providing for a quarter–part of Europe the capital of commerce and the arts. Somehow she has laughed and cried her way through the last two years; and now, I think, though on the surface her plight is more desperate than before, a very little help will be enough. She has no army, and by virtue of the depreciation of her money a trifling internal debt. Too much help may make of her a lifelong beggar; but a little will raise her from despondency and render her financial problem no longer beyond solution. My proposal, then, is to cancel the debts she owes to foreign governments, including empty claims to Reparation, and to give her a comparatively small sum out of the milliard gold marks reserved from British claims on Germany. Credits placed at her disposal in Berlin, equivalent in value to 300 million gold marks, to be available, as required, over a period of five years, might be enough. For the other new States, the cancelation of debt owing, and, in the case of Hungary, of Reparation claims, should be enough, except for Poland.