Whilst I make these observations in the interests of scientific accuracy, I admit that projects, for insisting on payment in kind may be very useful politically as a means of escaping out of our present _impasse_. In practice the value of such deliveries would turn out to be immensely less than the cash we are now demanding; but it may be easier to substitute deliveries of materials in place of cash, which will in practice result in a great abatement of our demands, than to abate the latter in so many words. Moreover, protests, against leaving Germany free to pay us in cash by selling goods how and where she can, enlist on the side of revision all the latent Protectionist sentiment which still abounds. If Germany were to make a strenuous effort to pay us by exploiting the only method open to her, namely, by selling as many goods as possible at low prices all over the world, it would not be long before many minds would represent this effort as a plot to ruin us; and persons of this way of thinking will be most easily won over, if we describe a reduction in our demands, as a prohibition to Germany against developing a nefarious competitive trade. Such a way of expressing a desirable change of policy combines, with a basis of truth, sufficient false doctrine to enable _The Times_, for example, to recommend it in a leading article without feeling conscious of any intellectual inconsistency; and it furnishes what so many people are now looking for, namely, a pretext for behaving sensibly, without having to suffer the indignity and inconvenience of thinking and speaking so too. Heaven forbid that I should discourage them! It is only too rarely that a good cause can summon to its assistance arguments sufficiently mixed to insure success. EXCURSUS IV THE MARK EXCHANGE