Most suggestions in favor of our being paid in kind are too vague to be criticized. But they usually suffer from the confusion of supposing that there is some advantage in our being paid directly in kind even in the case of articles which Germany might be expected to export in any case. For example, the Annexes to the Treaty which deal with deliveries in kind chiefly relate to coal, dyestuffs, and ships. These certainly do not satisfy the criterion of not competing with our own products; and I see very little advantage, but on the other hand some loss and inconvenience, in the Allies’ receiving these goods direct, instead of Germany’s selling them in the best market and paying over the proceeds. In the case of coal in particular, it would be much better if Germany sold her output for cash in the best export markets, whether to France and Belgium or to the neighboring neutrals, and then paid the cash over to France and Belgium, than that coal should be delivered to the Allies for which the latter may have no immediate use, or by transport routes which are uneconomical, when neutrals need the coal and what the Allies really require is the equivalent cash. In some cases the Allies have re–sold the coal which Germany has delivered to them,—a procedure which, in the case of an article for which freight charges cover so large a proportion of the whole value, involves a preposterous waste. If we try to stipulate the precise commodities in which Germany is to pay us, we shall not secure from her so large a contribution, as if we fix a reasonable sum which is within her capacity, and then leave her to find the money as best she can. If, moreover, the sum fixed is reasonable, the annual payments will not be so large, in proportion to the total volume of international trade, that Great Britain need be nervous lest the payments upset the normal equilibrium of her economic life in any greater degree than is bound to result in any case from the gradual economic recovery of so formidable a trade rival as pre–war Germany.