A NEW START

Subject to the settlement of a few remaining points of difference that still separate the German and Allied delegates, the Reparations Conference has finally arrived, after weeks of discussion, at an agreement over the total amount of Germany's war debt. The figures represent a triumph for the German stand that is best appreciated by comparing the $8,800,000,000 new decided upon as the total due with the $21,000,000,000 that was fixed at the London conference of 1921. Evidently in their anxiety at seeing their prospects dwindle with every consideration of the problem, the creditor nations are glad to win Germany's consent to a sum greatly below their original hopes rather than have the matter remain any longer in doubt.

The immediate effect of the agreement, if it is ratified by the governments concerned, will make for the economic benefit of all of them by disposing of the uncertainty that has featured the question of reparations ever since the war. But students of history may well be cynical of the permanent nature of such an agreement. With the payments stretching over sixty years, there is every chance that before their completion the political relations of the European powers will be vastly different to their condition now. Modern Europe has never passed sixty years without a major conflict, and it is unlikely that the diplomatic situation will not have undergone, before 1989, changes that will render obsolete any agreement based on the present political isolation of Germany.

Even granted that the allies of the last war retain their unanimity against their old opponent. Germany's rapid come-back will soon make her much less amenable to compulsion. At present in urgent need of foreign capital to finance her industry, Germany must tread carefully to avoid offending her possible sources of credit, especially the United States, but once her prosperity is restored to its pre-war condition it may prove no easy task to enforce the provisions of any treaty made at this time. Laudable as is the achievement of the delegates in bringing a settlement out of the sharp divergences of opinion that preceded the conference, no human agency can forsee the needs of half a century to come, and the most optimistic supporter of the conference can hardly hope that it has closed the problem permanently.