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Show its equivalent, the while she carries on with her own cost of living and cost of production. The best terms Germany gets will be hard terms from the German standpoirft. I How Germany Must Pay - t ALLIED experts have figured that Germany can pay indemnity aggregating 220,000,- 000,000 gold marls, plus a 12V3 per cent tax upon her export trade; all this to be spread over a period of 42 years. German experts now arc preparing statistics to prove that Germany cannot pay that much. In France and Great Britain the question is: "How much can we get out of Germany during this and the next "generation?" A British economic expert, J. Ellis Barker, a year or so ago, pointed out two huge German resources, either of which, he insisted, would pay the indemnity then demanded by France, considerably con-siderably higher than that now agreed upon by allied economic experts. Germany's coal and potash would square Germany's war debts to the allied nations. Barker said. He estimated (from prewar German reports) that in the Rhenish-Westphalian coal fields alone Germany had coal worth (at prewar- mine prices) ten times as much as is now asked of Germany, exclusive of the export tax, which economists recognize would be a high tariff wall against Germany's trade for at least four decades. The coal in-that district, Barker estimated, was worth 2200 billion gold marks. The allied experts place the indemnity at 220 billion gold marks (exclusive of export tax). Germany's immense potash resources (at prewar pre-war prices) would, according to Barker's estimates, esti-mates, yield something like 5oo billion gold marks, or more than twice the fixed indemnity. The trouble, though, lies in the fact that the coal and potash must be mined, and the workers must live while they dig. If the coal and potash could be scooped up, as so much gold in a vault, and transported to the allied treasuries, the solving of the indemnity problem would be comparatively com-paratively easy. If Germany could now hand over half her potash, a tenth of her underground coal, and call the bill settled, there would be less waiting and gnashing of teeth beyond the Rhine. But she can't. " Germany must settle to the stern and har wearing task of mining her coal and potash, of turning her other natural resources into gold, or |