[107] The following is the salient passage of the Memorandum: “After the soldier’s discharge as unfit he rejoins the civilian population, and as for the future he cannot (in whole or in part) earn his own livelihood, he is suffering damage as a member of the civilian population, for which the German Government are again liable to make compensation. In other words, the pension for disablement which he draws from the French Government is really a liability of the German Government, which they must under the above reservation make good to the French Government. It could not be argued that as he was disabled while a soldier he does not suffer damage as a civilian after his discharge if he is unfit to do his ordinary work. He does literally suffer as civilian after his discharge, and his pension is intended to make good this damage, and is therefore a liability of the German Government.” [108] _What Really Happened at Paris_, p. 272. [109] Mr. Lamont adds that “it was not a contempt of logic, but simply an impatience of technicality; a determination to brush aside verbiage and get at the root of things. There was not one of us in the room whose heart did not beat with a like feeling.” These words not merely reflect a little naïvely the modern opportunist’s impatience of legality and respect for the _fait accompli_, but also recall the atmosphere of exhaustion and the longing of everyone to be finished, somehow, with this dreadful controversy, which for months had outraged at the same time the intellects and the consciences of most of the participators. Yet, even so, to their lasting credit, the American Delegation had stood firm for the law, and it was the President, and he alone, who capitulated to the lying exigencies of politics. CHAPTER VI REPARATION, INTER–ALLY DEBT, AND INTERNATIONAL TRADE It is fashionable at the present time to urge a reduction of the Allies’ claims on Germany and of America’s claims on the Allies, on the ground that, as such payments can only be made in goods, insistence on these claims will be positively injurious to the claimants. That it is in the self–interest of the Allies and of America to abate their respective demands, I hold to be true. But it is better not to use bad arguments, and the suggestion that it is necessarily injurious to receive goods for nothing is not plausible or correct. I seek in this chapter to disentangle the true from the false in the now popular belief that there is something harmful in compelling Germany (or Europe) to “fling goods at us.” The argument is a little intricate and the reader must be patient.