From 1936 onwards she will have to pay to us $3,250,000,000 annually in order to keep pace with the interest alone.

At the end of any year in which she pays less than this sum she will owe more than she did at the beginning of it.

And if she is to discharge the capital sum in thirty years from 1930, _i.e._ in forty-eight years from the Armistice, she must pay an additional $650,000,000 annually, making $3,900,000,000 in all.[115] It is, in my judgment, as certain as anything can be, for reasons which I will elaborate in a moment, that Germany cannot pay anything approaching this sum.

Until the Treaty is altered, therefore, Germany has in effect engaged herself to hand over to the Allies the whole of her surplus production in perpetuity.
6.

This is not less the case because the Reparation Commission has been given discretionary powers to vary the rate of interest, and to postpone and even to cancel the capital indebtedness.