whole basis of the Peace as drafted by denying Germany's responsibility for the war. Admitting that the former government “have certainly contributed to the disaster,” he added: "But we energetically deny that Germany and its people, who were convinced that they were making a war of defence, were alone guilty."

Whatever may be considered the rights and wrongs of this question, whatever may have been the distinctions drawn by leaders on the Allies' side between the German people and its government, whatever fundamental importance attached to the issue in determining the future relations of peoples, the Germans were most ill-advised in making this the turning-point of their contentions. The point was not a debatable one at the time. No amount of argument or even documentary evidence could have convinced either side that it was wrong. It was simply inevitable that the allied powers should have taken the ground they did and have asserted Germany's responsibility first and last. There was not a man in that room who had not travelled over the miles and miles of fair country utterly devastated by the German invasion; had not seen ruined homes, destroyed cities, multitudinous cemeteries, looted factories, fruit trees wantonly cut down; had not heard the stories of French or Belgian sufferers; did not know of the kind of peace Germany, when she had had the power at Brest-Litovsk, had sought to impose upon the vanquished. What utter folly, then, to argue sullenly at such a time that Germany was not guilty!

And yet observations on this dangerous and futile subject occupied about a third of Brockdorff-Rantzau's speech; and the faces of his auditors grew more set against him at every word. And he did not improve the impression he was making on them, though he did make them squirm, by his outburst:

"The hundreds of thousands of non-combatants who have perished since the 11th of November by reason of the blockade were killed with cold deliberation, after our adversaries had conquered and victory had been assured to them."

Brockdorff-Rantzau reached the strongest elements in the German case only after thus antagonizing all his hearers. He struck firm ground at last when he declared that, alone and powerless as Germany stood before the victorious powers, she had yet one ally-"the right which is guaranteed by the principles of peace."

No one could dispute the assertion that "the principles of President Wilson have become binding for both parties to the war." Criticism of the terms in relation to these principles must command attention-or should have done so, if tactfully presented. A better note was struck, though too late, by the declaration of Germany's readiness to accept without demur all the sacrifices imposed upon her by those principles, if her rights under them were respected.

The German Minister's words on the reconstruction of Europe, on Germany's essential place in the economic order, on the necessity of a reasonable reparation settlement and of allowing Germany the means of paying, did make an undoubted impression. Here he was touching on one of the most defective aspects of the settlement, as many in the allied camp already realized. His raising of the point stimulated the critics of the reparation settlement to renew their efforts to change it. But he was saying nothing that Wilson had not said some ten days before.

He was also only echoing the warnings of Bliss when he declared: "The peace which may not be defended in the name of right before the world always calls forth new

resistances against it. Nobody will be capable of subscribing to it with good conscience, for it will not be possible of fulfilment. Nobody could be able to take upon himself the guarantee of its execution which ought to lie in its signature."

This German's plea also for the whole-hearted cooperation of all peoples in a league of nations which recognizes their "economic and social solidarity" as well as the need of maintaining peaceful political relations, lays out a programme which the world must yet live if it is to escape the danger of destroying itself.

up to

The impression made upon an open mind by this first formal utterance from the German side, and confirmed by all the halting discussion which followed, was that the Germans had a real case to present against the Treaty, but that they were most unfortunate in their methods of presenting it. They never fully lived up to the opportunity afforded them of laying bare the real defects of the Allies' work of peace.

This opening speech was not really in the nature of an observation on the Treaty, which the Germans had not yet read; it therefore called for no reply from the allied and associated powers. Clemenceau, in a fine if suppressed choler, dismissed the meeting abruptly at the close of the address:

M. CLEMENCEAU: Has anybody any more. observations to offer? Does no one wish to speak? If not, the meeting is closed.

Such was the great occasion, and such the deliverances. The book of the destinies of the nations had been laid down. The session lasted only a brief moment of a spring day; and then the Germans returned to their hotel behind its palings and its guards, and the allied leaders were whirled swiftly back to Paris.

There was some characteristic discussion of these events when the Four met next day.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The only part of Brockdorff-Rantzau's speech of the previous day which had made him feel uncomfortable was the passage where he had alluded to the starvation which had occurred since the Armistice had been signed.

M. CLEMENCEAU said that his statement had to be proved. .

President WILSON told M. Clemenceau that we ought not to blink facts because we were annoyed with Brockdorff-Rantzau. There was no doubt people had been starved because, through no one's fault, it had not been possible to get the Treaty of Peace ready earlier.

M. CLEMENCEAU told President Wilson that he could give him an order to visit women from fourteen years of age to sixty, who had been violated by the Germans.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE said that Sir Ernest Pollock had told him that documents before the Commission on breaches of the laws of war had been so bad that only parts of them were read. The Commission had become perfectly sick with reading them.

M. CLEMENCEAU said that they had an awful case against the Germans.1

Immediately the German answers began to pour in, averaging one a day down to the time when the general "Observations on the Conditions of the Peace," was handed in on May 29. Although the task of answering these notes was turned over to the committees of experts, the Four were also obliged to devote a good deal of attention to them. This exchange of notes was conducted outside the veil of secrecy which shrouded the deliberations of the Councils themselves. The Germans could not be restrained from publishing them, so the Allies published too. Although the notes on both sides have mostly been published, the important discussions in the Council in regard to them have not been. These must be discussed, together with the incidents of the final signing of the Treaty, in the following chapter.

'Secret Minutes, Council of Four, May 8.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE GERMAN RESPONSES AND ALLIED REPLIES-CRITICISMS BY GENERAL SMUTS ATTEMPTS AT REVISION THE SIGNING IN THE HALL OF

T

MIRRORS

HE period of the German responses is in many ways the most interesting and significant of the Peace Conference. It brought out more clearly and definitely than ever before the real problems of peace, especially in its more difficult and complicated economic aspects; and it invoked a response from the public opinion of the world not possible before because neither the terms of the Treaty, nor the contentions of the Germans was known.

It was a period, in proportion to the entire length of the Peace Conference somewhat extended, lasting from May 7, when the "book," as Clemenceau called it, was laid down before the Germans at the Trianon Palace, and June 28, when it was signed in the Hall of Mirrors. During this period the Germans, housed in the hotel at Versailles, were furiously busy with their responses, couriers were speeding back and forth with red-sealed documents, and every effort was being made to finish the Treaty and get to the signing.

As it was said in the last chapter there were three tests to be applied to the Treaty: Was it just? Would the Germans accept it? Could it be practically carried out? In one of the very first of the German notes, May 10, the attack is opened upon all three of these points. It asserts