Again, in November, 1920, Ogier, Minister of the liberated regions, put before the Reparations Commission in the name of France a detailed memorial which made the value of the territories to be reconstructed only for the cases of private individuals come to 140 milliards, not including the pensions, damage to railways and mercantile marine, which totalled 218 milliards, of which 77 milliards were for pensions and 141 milliards for damages.
Of late the sense of reality has begun to diffuse itself. The Minister Loucheur himself has laughed at the earlier figures, and has stated that the damages do not exceed eighty milliards.
But the French public has been accustomed for some time to take the figures of Klotz seriously, and to discuss indemnities of 150, 200 and 250 milliards. The public, however, is not yet aware of the real position, and will not be able to arrive at a just realization of it without passing through a serious moral crisis which will be the first secure element of the real peace.
Setting aside all questions of indemnities from Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria (they have nothing to give, can give nothing; on the contrary, they ask and merit assistance), it is clear that all the indemnities must be paid by Germany.
The French totals of the material damage claims in the invaded districts have been absolutely fantastic and more exaggerated than in the case of Belgium, whose indemnity claims would lead one to suppose the total destruction of at least the third part of her territory, almost as if she had undergone the submersion of, say, ten thousand square metres of her small territory.
This problem of the indemnities, limited to the reparation of damages, and in accordance with the costs contemplated in the Treaty of Versailles, has never been seriously tackled. One may even say it has not been seriously examined. And it is deplorable that there has been created among the public, or among a large part of it, the conviction that Germany will repair the damage of the War by her own effort. This idea, however, finds no acceptance in England among serious persons, and in Italy no one believes in it. But in France and Belgium the idea is widely diffused, and the wish to spread the belief is lively in several sections of opinion, not because intelligent people believe in the possibility of effective payment, but with the idea of putting Germany in the light of not maintaining the clauses of the peace, thus extending the right to prolong the military occupation and even to aggravate it. Germany, thereby, is kept out of the League of Nations and her dissolution facilitated.