268 
INTERNATIONAL TRADE 
cin 
BR 0] 
loans. French investors had salable foreign securities which they 
were tempted to sell in masses, putting the proceeds in the domestic 
rentes. What happened under these circumstances (so fortunate 
for France) gives hardly any clue to what might happen under 
conditions such as would ordinarily have to be faced by a country 
required to pay a great lump-sum indemnity. 
Nor does it indicate — I may remark in passing — what is likely 
to happen if a country has to make sudden heavy payments of a 
non-political character; as, for example, if there be great importa- 
tions to meet a deficient harvest. Floating securities (if available) 
are then likely to move quickly in payment of the imports. But 
great quantities of securities held for permanent investment by 
thousands of scattered persons would not be easily dislodged. The 
economist who is searching for illustration or substantiation of his 
theories is circumvented, so to speak, by the unusual conditions 
which existed in the French case. He might expect to find the case 
a very pretty one for his purposes. What would really happen if 
one country were called on to remit a huge sum to another within 
the short space of a year or two? Unfortunately, any theoretical 
analysis he may make of the presumable outcome must remain 
theoretical. The French experience helps hardly at all for the 
purposes of verification. And if the case thus affords but slight 
instruction with regard to transactions of an extraordinary and 
even catastrophic character, it affords still less for the ordinary 
operations of international trade. 
What of the other side of the case? What did Germany get? 
What was done with the bills of exchange by which the bulk of 
the payments were made? Here our information is very much 
less complete; at the same time, some light is thrown on certain 
more general problems of international payments. 
As we have seen, the indemnity was received preponderantly in 
bills of exchange — on England, Belgium, Holland, and so on. 
What did the German Treasury do with those bills? Did it call for 
the remittances of specie as they fell due? or sell the bills in Ger- 
many, leaving it to the purchasers to collect in any way they