FNanchor_18_18">[18] and the author of The Economic Consequences of the Peace had suffered widespread calumny for fixing on the figure of 137 milliards,[19] as being the nearest estimate he could make. The public, and the Government also, were, therefore, taken by surprise when the Reparation Commission announced that they unanimously assessed the figure at 132 milliards (i.e., $33,000,000,000).[20] It now turned out that the Decisions[Pg 40] of Paris, which had been represented as a material amelioration of the Treaty which Germany was ungrateful not to accept, were no such thing; and that Germany was at that moment suffering from an invasion of her territory for a refusal to subscribe to terms which were severer in some respects than the Treaty itself. I shall examine the decision of the Reparation Commission in detail in Chapter IV. It put the question on a new basis and the Decisions of London could hardly have been possible otherwise.

The decision of the Reparation Commission and the arrival of the date, May 1, 1921, fixed in the Treaty for the promulgation of a definite Reparation scheme, provided a sufficient ground for reopening the whole question. Germany had refused the Decisions of Paris; the Sanctions had failed to move her; the régime of the Treaty was therefore reinstated; and under the Treaty it was for the Reparation Commission to propose a scheme.

In these circumstances the Allies met once more in London in the closing days of April 1921. The scheme there concerted was really the work of the Supreme Council, but the forms of the Treaty were preserved, and the Reparation Commis