'The real difficulty ... is due to the difficulty of securing payment outside the limits of Germany. Germany could pay--pay easily--inside her own boundary, but she could not export her forests, railways, or land across her own frontiers and make them over to the Allies. Take the railways, for example. Suppose the Allies took possession of them and doubled the charges; they would be paid in paper marks which would be valueless directly they crossed the frontier. 'The only way Germany could pay was by way of exports--that is by difference between German imports and exports. If, however, German imports were too much restricted, the Germans would be unable to obtain food and raw materials necessary for their manufactures. Some of Germany's principal markets--Russia and Central Europe--were no longer purchasers, and if she exported too much to the Allies, it meant the ruin of their industry and lack of employment for their people. Even in the case of neutrals it was only possible generally to increase German exports by depriving our traders of their markets.'[129] There is not a line here that is not a paraphrase of the chapter in the early edition of _The Great Illusion_. The following is the comment of Mr Maynard Keynes, ex-Advisor to the British Treasury, on the claims put forward after the Paris Conference of January 1921:-- 'It would be easy to point out how, if Germany could compass the vast export trade which the Paris proposals contemplate, it could only be by ousting some of the staple trades of Great Britain from the markets of the world. Exports of what commodities, we may ask, in addition to her present exports, is Germany going to find a market for in 1922--to look no farther ahead--which will enable her to make the payment of between £150,000,000 and £200,000,000 including the export proportion which will be due from her in that year? Germany's five principal exports before the War were iron, steel, and machinery, coal and coke, woollen goods and cotton goods. Which of these trades does Paris think she is going to develop on a hitherto unprecedented scale? Or if not these, what others? And how is she going to finance the import of raw materials which, except in the case of coal and coke, are a prior necessity to manufacture, if the proceeds of the goods when made will not be available to repay the credits? I ask these questions in respect of the year 1922 because many people may erroneously believe that while the proposed settlement is necessarily of a problematic character for the later years--only time can show--it makes some sort of a start possible. These questions are serious and practical, and they deserve to be answered. If the Paris proposals are more than wind, they mean a vast re-organisation of the