The Interest Barometer.

When a debtor cannot pay, and when it is inconvenient or impossible for a creditor to foreclose or distrain, a wise creditor reduces capital or interest, or both. Lausanne is an instance of one process, and the conversion campaign of the other. Though the German external liability and the British internal debt have no direct connection, they are emblematic of the compromise processes by which creditor and debtor can be brought together without compulsion and without default or repudiation. National sentiment was behind the British conversion campaign, and there must also have been some semblance of an international sentiment at Lausanne, or agreement there would not have been achieved.