France had been willing to accept before. Any additional army costs were to be met out of each Occupying Power's share in Reparation payments, but the whole of this arrangement was to be subject to reconsideration at the end of a year (Art. 2). The outstanding costs of the former American Army of Occupation were to be paid off in annuities (ranking above the current costs of the Allied Armies of Occupation) which were to be spread over about twenty years, instead of twelve, from the 1st September, 1926. The American Reparation claim was to be met by an annual payment of 21 per cent. in each year of that portion of the Dawes annuity which was available for Reparation, up to an annual maximum of 45,000,000 marks (gold). These arrangements were to supersede the agreement of the 25th May, 1923 (Art. 3). Five per cent. of each annuity, after the satisfaction of the above list of priorities, was to be assigned to the repayment of the Belgian War Debt to France and Great Britain (Art. 4) and 1 per cent. (rising to something more from the fifth year onwards) to payments in lieu of restitution (Art. 5). After the extinction of the Belgian priority, which was expected to occur at some date between the 1st September, 1925, and the 1st September, 1926, the Belgian percentage in the distribution of Reparation payments was to be reduced from 8 to 4 per cent., the other 3 per cent. being divided between Great Britain and France in the Spa proportions (Art. 6). The percentages of Greece and Rumania were fixed at 0.4 and 1.11 per cent. respectively of Reparation payments

1 Rumania was aggrieved at this allotment, on the ground that, although her percentage was thus raised only 0.1 per cent. above the 1 per cent. offered to her in the Spa Agreement, which she had hitherto refused to accept, she had failed to obtain her release from her obligations under the head of costs of liberation' (see H. P. C., Vol. v, pp. 12-16) on which payments were due to begin in 1926, and this in spite of the fact that her prospect of obtaining any substantial Reparation receipts to set off against these liabilities had disappeared with the virtually indefinite postponement of Austrian and Hungarian Reparation payments. (See The Times, 12th January, 1925.) This grievance disappears when translated into figures, since Rumania's Liberation Bond liability had been fixed by the Reparation Commission at a capital value of 235,000,000 francs (gold) or less than £10,000,000 sterling, while her 1.1 per cent. of the Dawes annuities would bring her in more than £1,000,000 sterling in a normal year-the capital value of which, on any calculation, would be considerably greater. It may be added that the Liberation Bonds of 1919 had in effect been written off by the agreement of the 11th March, 1922, under which the Principal Allied Powers had agreed to take German 'C' Bonds (i. e. worthless paper) in discharge of them. Rumania's case was further weakened by the facts that she had originally presented an exaggerated claim for Reparation, that she had not cultivated good relations with the Reparation Commission, and that in 1919 she had herself invaded and committed depredations in Hungary (the proceeds of which were, at any rate nominally, to be debited to her Reparation account under the Trianon Treaty, Art. 181). It was, no doubt, such considerations as these that led the

available for distribution from Germany and of the first half of payments available from Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria (Art. 7).

The above-named articles, dealing with the allocation of the Dawes annuities, formed the substance of Chapter I of the agreement. In Chapter II, dealing with the settlement of past accounts, the Ruhr accounts were provided for as follows (Art. 3). The Reparation Commission was to fix the value in gold marks of the receipts of every nature obtained by the French, Belgian, and Italian Governments from Germany since the 11th January, 1923,1 drawing up separate accounts for deliveries in kind and cash receipts. Against these deliveries in kind there were to be allowed as deductionsbesides the French and Belgian normal expenses of military occupation, for which provision down to the 31st August, 1924, was made, on the same footing as for British expenses of military occupation, in Articles 13 and 15 on the basis of the agreement of the 11th March, 19222 the extra costs incurred by the French and Belgian Governments during the period January 1, 1923, to August 31, 1924, through the maintenance of military forces in German territory, not occupied on January 1, 1923, after setting off the normal cost of the maintenance of these forces in their home garrisons'. The remainder of these deliveries in kind was to be debited to the two Powers. This represented a twofold victory for the British point of view, since the French and Belgians had originally proposed, first, to set off these extra costs of occupation (i. e. costs of invasion) against the cash receipts, and not against the deliveries in kind, arising from the Ruhr operations, and secondly to charge the gross cost of the extra forces employed, without allowance for what they would have cost in any case if they had stayed at home. On the other hand, as a concession to France and Belgium, it was agreed

Rumanian Government to sign the agreement of the 14th January, 1925, with certain reservations. The really interesting point about the 1.1 per cent. allotted to Rumania is that it gives a standard of comparison by which to measure the 24 per cent. allotted to the United States. When the amount of civil damage caused by Germany during the War of 1914 to private citizens in Rumania (a country invaded by German armies) and in the United States is compared, it will be seen that the percentage finally allotted to the two countries (11 and 2 per cent. respectively) out of the sums available for Reparation from the Dawes annuities bore no relation to the relative damages incurred, but simply recorded the disparity in diplomatic bargaining-power between the greatest of the Great Powers and a state of lesser calibre.

The inter-Allied experts had found it impossible, during their preliminary conference of the 27th October-23rd December, to check the Ruhr accounts which were presented to them by the French and Belgian Governments The Times, 7th January, 1925).

See Survey, 1920-3, pp. 166-8.

that there should be allowed as deductions from the receipts in cash 'the civil costs of collection and expenses of administration incurred before August 31, 1924, and the costs of loading coal and exploitation of mines and cokeries up to the same date'. The balance of cash receipts was to be applied towards the satisfaction of the Belgian priority; and in this the inter-Allied agreement of the 14th January, 1925, coincided with the Franco-Belgian agreement of the 12th May, 1923. Since, however, under the inter-Allied agreement, this balance would be larger, the effect would be to extinguish the Belgian priority at an earlier date and to this extent to benefit the claimants to Reparation as a body, while the special gains of France and Belgium would be diminished to a corresponding extent by the setting off, against their gross receipts in kind arising out of their activities in the Ruhr, of a considerably larger proportion of their actual out-of-pocket expenses than they had intended.

The three remaining chapters of the agreement of the 14th January, 1925 which dealt respectively with special questions arising out of previous agreements; interest and arrears; and miscellaneous questions-contained little that was of general importance, except for Article 25, which empowered the Reparation Commission to interpret the agreement by unanimous resolution and provided for arbitration in several categories of dispute over questions of interpretation which might arise.

It will be noted that the Spa Agreement was not set aside and that the percentages established by it therefore remained in force as the general basis for the distribution of sums available for Reparation payments.

The signature of this agreement on the 14th January, 1925, appeared at the time to mark the settlement of a problem which had baffled the statesmen of Europe since the coming into force of the Versailles Treaty on the 10th January, 1920, five years before. In his closing speech M. Clémentel drew the attention of his colleagues to the remarkable fact that this was the first occasion since the year 1919 on which official delegates of all the Allied and Associated Powers (including the United States) had met round the same table.1

1 The Times, 15th January, 1925. The American representative at the London Conference of the preceding summer had not, of course, been an official delegate empowered to sign a diplomatic instrument on his Government's behalf.

In 1924 three cases arose under this head, one of which was important and interesting, another painful, and a third amusing.

The last-mentioned affair arose out of the movements of the ex-Crown Prince. In the autumn of 1923 it was reported that the German Government intended to grant the ex-Crown Prince a passport to return to Germany; and in response to an inquiry on the point which was made on the 9th November by the Conference of Ambassadors, the report was confirmed by the German Ambassador in Paris, Herr von Hoesch. On the 18th November, however, Herr von Hoesch addressed a note 2 to the Quai d'Orsay in which he enclosed a copy of the formal renunciation of the Prussian and Imperial Crowns which had been signed by the ex-Crown Prince on the 1st December, 1918; and he added that the ex-Kaiser had made no application for permission to return, and that the German Government pledged itself once again never to allow him to do so. This note was communicated to the Conference of Ambassadors, and on the 21st November the latter sent a second note 3 to Herr von Hoesch, in which they accepted his declarations, while warning him that the Allied Powers would hold the German Government fully responsible for any consequences which might result from the fact that it was permitting the ex-Crown Prince to reside in German territory. The ex-Crown Prince then moved from Holland to his estates at Oels in Silesia, after giving an undertaking to the German Government that he would abstain from taking part in politics. This pledge he seems to have observed in Silesia, even under temptation, but on the 22nd May he moved again, this time from Oels to Potsdam. Upon the announcement that he intended to take part there in the unveiling of two war memorials, the German Government hastily cancelled one of these celebrations and cut down the other (at which, after all, the ex-Crown Prince did not put in an appearance). At Potsdam, however, the unveiling of war memorials seems at this time to have been an almost daily occurrence, and, under prolonged temptation, the ex-Crown Prince's good resolution

1 See Survey, 1920-3, pp. 96-9 for the negotiations between the Allied Powers and the Netherlands concerning the ex-Kaiser, and for the Leipzig trials.

2 Text in L'Europe Nouvelle, 22nd November, 1923.

3 Text in loc. cit.

4 See The Times, 12th April, 1924, for an account of his discreet behaviour at a celebration at Breslau on the 11th April.

Le Temps, 24th May, 1924.

The Times, 24th May, 1924.

failed. On the 14th June he satisfied his craving by attending one of these ceremonies in the field uniform of a general of division. Whether that was a breach of his pledge was never put to the test, since the Conference of Ambassadors prudently abstained from entering into a controversy with the German Government on this nice diplomatic question.

1

During January 1924 an important and interesting case was tried in Paris before the Belgian-German Mixed Arbitral Tribunal which had been set up under the Versailles Treaty (Art. 304). The plaintiffs were the Belgian workmen who, during the War of 1914–18, had been deported from the Occupied Belgian Territory by the Germans and had been forced to work behind the German front. The defendant was the German Government, which was sued for payment on two counts: for remuneration on account of work exacted from the plaintiffs, and for compensation on account of ill-treatment inflicted on them. These deportations had been one of the most serious misdemeanours on a large scale which the Germans had committed against enemy civilian populations; and while the counsel for the prosecution, M. Pirenne, argued that his clients were entitled to redress not only in equity but under the German Civil Code,2 the counsel for the defence, Herr Hittler, took the technical point that this claim fell under the head of Reparation, the total of which had been fixed by the Reparation Commission on the 28th April, 1921.3 The case was adjourned until the beginning of June, when a model case, that of a workman named Loriaux, was submitted to the Mixed Arbitral Tribunal, which gave judgement on the 3rd June in favour of the plaintiff. A year later the whole question was settled by an arrangement between the German Government and the National Federation, representing the deportees. An agreement was signed in Paris in July 1925 by which the deportees were to receive 24,000,000 francs. The agreement was subject to the approval of the Mixed Arbitral Tribunal, which was to meet at Lausanne at the end of the month.5

The painful case was of that of General von Nathusius. This German officer, who had held a command on the German front in

1 For these deportations, see F. Passelecq: Les Déportations Belges à la lumière des documents allemands (Paris, 1917, Berger-Levrault).

2 Le Temps, 9th and 10th January, 1924.

3 See Survey, 1920-3, pp. 143-4.

4 See Recueil des décisions des Tribunaux Arbitraux Mixtes, 4th year, Nos. 45-8, p. 674 (Paris, Librairie du Recueil Sirey).

5 The Times, 14th July, 1925.

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