[ Lillie Martin Wood ] Signed autograph 'copy of my letter sent to Miss Meakin at Freiburg, Baden': a long and informed letter to a German friend regarding war profiteering, inflation, and the economic state of Weimar Germany.

6pp., 4to. In good condition, on aged paper. In envelope docketted by her 'My reply to Miss Meakin | to her letter of July 18th. 1924'. The recipient is a German former friend, who has sent her a copy of a letter she has sent the London magazine the Spectator, complaining of the economic treatment of Germany since the First World War. Wood signs herself 'Your affectionate old friend', recalling 'our beloved parents, and [...] our own youth'. She concludes bitterly: 'Please dont interrupt your studies for the thankless task of trying to make me forget all that we owe to Germany. I would have, I must say again, probably have written with less heat but for your injustice to my own country & its dealings with its "War Profiteers" and your calm prophecy that Germany "will pay very soon after France has evacuated the Ruhr." She can pay, the Dawes report says; and she has to be compelled to pay, all her previous history shows. You look at the surrounding details of individual distress, & not at the broad lines of a country's finance. | I am very sorry for adding by this letter to the mental wear & tear that close, concentrated study in itself entails; but I am also very sorry for the cleavage between me and an affectionate admired old friend caused by your faith in Germany & the German people as they now are.' Among topics discussed are: 'that rich Germans have poured into the laps of Italian (and Swiss and Monegasque) hotelkeepers & shopkeepers, money that they owed to the Allied Governments and - through taxation - to their own poor. Because I believe everything you have told me before, (& now tell me again) of the sufferings of women and children & the intellectual classes'. Wood asks: 'how have the successive Governments of England and Germany respectively treated their Profiteers as regards taxation?' She discussing the question at length, before turning to another topic Meakin raises: 'You speak in your Spectator letter of "inflation" quite as if it were some natural catastrophe. It was the considered policy of Helferrich and successive Exchequer Chancellors, supported by Strines, Tyssen, & all great industrialists, for the very good reason that by its means they wiped off both their internal & external debt, & everywhere renewed their plant - which we cannot afford to do - and before the French occupation of the Ruhr were paying enormous dividends to their shareholders, which wre almost un-taxed, while their Governments cried "Poverty!"' She also suggests that Meakin's 'present friends would be better occupied looking at home for the authors of their miseries, than across the border at the French (their intended victims) or at anybody else. [...] Since the French occupation heavier taxation has been put on, but not arranged to leave out the poor. My disgust at such a nation is inexpressible. Why should I accept the confident prophecy at the end of your letter, in defiance of all previous facts? No nation now, no financiers, will accept the word of any German government without specified guarantees.' Other topics are Russian mobilisation and France's unpreparedness for the last war. ('It is very doubtful whether France will ever again make the mistake of 1914 of not being ready to repel an unprovoked attack from her gentle neighbours; twice in fifty years is too much.' She sums up her argument: 'pity for the innocent, for the children who did not fight, is no reason for pitying those who did and letting them wriggle out of all punishment'.