─–──────────────────┬─────────────────┬────────────────────────── │ Million Paper │ Million Gold Marks.[46] │ Marks. │ ├────────┬────────┼────────┬────────┬──────── │ │ │ │ │Excess │Imports.│Exports.│Imports.│Exports.│ of │ │ │ │ │Imports. ────────────────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼──────── 1921, May │ 5,487│ 4,512│ 374.4│ 307.9│ 66.5 ” June │ 6,409│ 5,433│ 388.8│ 329.7│ 59.1 ” July │ 7,580│ 6,208│ 413.7│ 338.7│ 75.0 ” August │ 9,418│ 6,684│ 477.2│ 334.8│ 142.4 ” September │ 10,668│ 7,519│ 436.6│ 307.7│ 128.9 ” October[47] │ 13,900│ 9,700│ 352.6│ 246.0│ 106.6 ├────────┼────────┼────────┼────────┼──────── Total for six months│ 53,462│ 40,056│ 2443.3│ 1864.8│ 578.5 ────────────────────┴────────┴────────┴────────┴────────┴──────── In respect of these six months Germany must make a fixed payment of 1000 million gold marks plus 26 per cent of the exports as above, namely 484.8 million gold marks, that is 1484.8 million gold marks altogether, which is equal to about 80 per cent of her exports; whereas apart from any Reparation payments, she had a _deficit_ on her foreign trade at the rate of more than 1 milliard gold marks per annum. The bulk of Germany’s imports are necessary either to her industries or to the food supply of the country. It is therefore certain that with exports of (say) 6 milliards she could not cut her imports so low as to have the surplus of 3½ milliards, which would be necessary to meet her Reparation liabilities. If, however, her exports were to rise to 10 milliards, her Reparation liabilities would become 4.6 milliards. Germany, to meet her liabilities, must therefore raise the gold–value of her exports to double what they were in 1920 and 1921 _without increasing her imports at all_. I do not say that this is impossible, given time and an overwhelming motive, and with active assistance by the Allies to Germany’s export industries; but does any one think it practicable or likely in the actual circumstances of the case? And if Germany succeeded, would not this vast expansion of exports, unbalanced by imports, be considered by our manufacturers to be her crowning crime? That this should be the case even under the London Settlement of 1921 is a measure of the ludicrous folly of the figures given out in the British General Election of 1918, which were six times as high again.