German Public Opinion Today

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AN ESTIMATE of conditions in Central Europe is as dangerous as prophecy. What is true when written may be nonsense after the printers have spent a few days in putting the manuscript into type. Premiers meet--and disagree. The Reparation Commission forgets its judicial capacity and carries out the orders of politicians. There is no agreement anywhere, no common policy, and all the time the reparation question--the crux of the difficulties of Europe--remains unsettled. The reason is that nobody has the courage to speak the truth, to admit that German payments must be based on German capacity to pay. It is fear that this capacity may prove inferior to the hope inspired by propagandists which prevents the appointment of the expert commission suggested by the American Secretary of State. Politicians think that they can serenely override the laws of economics and, because they flout these laws, the waters of disaster are rising everywhere.

In Germany the situation is more serious, and perhaps more interesting, than elsewhere because the outcome is more dubious and the stakes are greater. In Austria one feels that the bottom has been reached, that the people are apathetic, merely waiting for outsiders to come and help. In Hungary there is a universal desire to make good; a government run by able men devises far-reaching and sound economic plans, the success of which, however, depends on the amount of reparation to be demanded--a sum still unfixed more than four years after the war! Everywhere it is the uncertainty and the lack of hope that paralyzes endeavor.

Since world prosperity depends on the prosperity of individual nations as surely as physical health depends on the soundness of different members of the body, it is certain that an economically sick Germany must poison the surrounding nations. For this reason it may be worth while to enumerate some of the causes of this political and economic illness. The two phases are too closely related to be considered separately...