738    THE PARTS PEACE CONFERENCE, 1919, VOLUME V


9. The Council had before them a letter from the Serbian Delega-
tion6 urging that out of the initial one thousand million pounds to
be paid by Germany, eighty-million pounds should tr.
Reparation.   specifically assigned to Serbia, together with a Mem-
Serbia's Claims
orandum by the Committee considering the question
of Reparation in the Austrian Treaty, to whom it had been referred
on May 13th.
(The Memorandum of the Committee was approved, subject to the
omission of the first paragraph of Clause 2, and the first four words
of the second paragraph.) (Appendix 5.A. and Appendix 5.B.)
VILLA MAJESTIC, PARIS, 20 May, 1919.
Appendix IA to CF-20
[The Head of the German Delegation (Brockdorff-Rantzau) to the
President of the Peace Conference (Clemenceau)]
Translation of French                GERMAN PEACE DELEGAnTON,
Translation of German Original         VERSAILLES, May 13, 1919.
M. PRESIDENT: In conformity with my communication of the 9th
instant,7 I have the honour to present to Your Excellency the Report of
the Economic Commission charged with the study of the effect of the
conditions of Peace on the situation of the German population.
"In the course of the last two generations, Germany has become
transformed from an agricultural State to an industrial State. As
long as she was an agricultural State, Germany could feed forty million
inhabitants.
In her quality of an industrial State she could ensure the nourish-
ment of a population of sixty seven millions. In 1913, the importation
of food stuffs amounted, in round figures, to twelve million tons.
Before the war a total of fifteen millions of persons provided for their
existence in Germany by foreign trade and by navigation, either in
a direct or an indirect manner, by the use of foreign raw material.
According to the Conditions of the Treaty of -Peace, Germany will
surrender her merchant tonnage and ships in course of construction
suitable for overseas trade. German shipbuilding yards will build
for five years in the first instance tonnage destined for the Allied and
Associated Governments.
Germany will, moreover, renounce her colonies; all her overseas
possessions, all her interests and securities in the Allied and Associ-
ated countries, and in their colonies, Dominions and protectorates,
will as an instalment of the payment for part of the reparation,
be subject to liquidation, and be exposed to any other economic war
measure which the Allied and Associated Powers think fit to maintain
or to take during the years of peace.
6 See appendix VB, p. 752.
' See appendix to CF-8, p. 564.