their own as it is, partly because a British contract is preferred; at least in the Federation of British Industries Bulletin of July 17, 1923, it was recorded that the Paterson Engineering Company of London had obtained the contract for a water supply for Reval, although several of the competing tenders, one of which was German, were lower than theirs.
Whence it follows that Germany can only pay an indemnity if the world has been allowed by its Governments to settle down into a state of sufficient political recovery and tranquillity to enable the manufacturer and the merchant and the financier and the investor to go forward in confidence to a great effort of expansion and construction and reconstruction. There is an enormous amount of work waiting to be done, millions of people wanting to do it, other millions wanting it to be done, and thousands of organizers and financiers ready to start it and carry it through, if the statesmen who are supposed to interpret the will of the nations would only get out of the way and leave free play to mankind's entirely sensible instinct in favour of growing, producing and exchanging the goods that it needs for its comfort.
If such a state of things could happen Germany's capacity to pay would look very different. By her policy of currency debase-
