trawlers, including the ones under construction. (17) The dismantling of both Germanys coal industry and its trade capabilities would create the desired effect of the German economy for which the Allies hoped. As far as the matter of monetary compensation, the treaty set up the Reparations Commission to take care of its collection.The Allies refused to rely on German good faith for the payment of reparations, so they included in the Treaty of Versailles the Reparations Commission. Its base function was the extraction from Germany year after year the maximum sum obtainable. (18) However, Keynes points out the problem in advance of this system: the sum when fixed will prove in excess of what can be paid in cash and in excess of what can be paid at all. (19) The problem indicated here is that no limit on the amount of reparations to be paid by Germany each year had been set, nor had a time limit for the payments to end been established. The Germans kept finding themselves in one hopeless situation after another with seemingly endless debt. In the end, though, the treaty itself hampered the Reparations Commission by not setting any definable limits of payment, and the entire reparations system eventually fell apart. One of the weaknesses of the treaty was the indecisiveness on the part of the diplomats that created it.The treaty soon proved to be ineffective in practice, partially a result of the misgivings of Georges Clemenceau and David Lloyd-George, respectively Prime Minister of France and Prime Minister of Great Britain. Clemenceau clearly distrusted his British allies, saying, there was no serious opposition to the harshest clauses of the Armistice except among our British allies, who were applying themselves heartily to the task of sparing Germany (20) Paul Birdsall shows the actual British sentiment at the time of the treaty, although his evaluation is not as harsh as Clemenceaus: the British delegates particularly were...
