by $989,000,000, or 162 per cent., and the official statement in May, 1919, of the count of subscriptions for the Victory Loan showed applications of $5,249,908,300 for the $4,500,000,000 total, or an oversubscription of almost exactly 16% per cent. Taking all our five war loans together, the American people had applied for 28 per cent. more than the Treasury had asked for. Considering the immense amount involved, it was safe to say that no such exhibition of investment power had ever been witnessed in financial history. The outstanding fact was that a great oversubscription had been made for a loan offered after the war was over, when the heaviest of war-taxes were being paid, when troops were coming home, when canvassers could no longer reckon on the white heat of patriotic fervor, and when people were turning from the concentration of all their energies on war finance and war production to the financial and industrial tasks of peace. Most curious was it, as an example of the workings of the German mind, that one Herr Schweibuser should have made, on May 14 of this year in the Tageblatt of Berlin, under the heading, "Failure of the American War Loan," the following extraordinary statement: "According to reports from New York, it has been extremely difficult to obtain the necessary subscriptions to the most recent war loan, which amounted to $4,500,000. Last Thursday, with only five days more open for the receipt of subscriptions, 45 per cent. of the total had not been subscribed. Most desperate expedients have been resorted to in order to avoid a failure of the loan. The City of New York was supposed to subscribe $1,000,000 (sic). Thus far only one-third thereof has been subscribed." 6 6 Principal Sources: The Evening Post, The Times, New York; the Matin (Paris), The Wall Street Journal (New York), Associated Press dispatches; The Literary Digest, The Tribune, The World, The Outlook, New York. P IV BISMARCK AND THIERS AT VERSAILLES IN 1871 EOPLE in Entente countries from time to time had betrayed much impatience over the delay in completing the negotiations. But the time taken was not exceptional. Other peace negotiations had taken months, and more than one took years. The greatest example of prolonged negotiations were those which resulted in the Peace of Westphalia, closing the Thirty Years' War. The definite movement for peace in that war began twelve years before its actual conclusion. Not until nine o'clock on October 24, 1648-twelve years after the negotiations began-was the peace signed and then the town "was given over to dances, ballets, entertainments, conviviality, and intemperance." Hostilities in the war of the American Revolution were at an end when General Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781, but the definite treaty of peace was not signed in Paris until September 3, 1783—one year, ten months and fourteen days later. The settlement of the American War, as the English call the war we call the War of 1812, required five months, and on several occasions the negotiations at Ghent were almost broken off before the treaty was signed on December 24, 1814. Hostilities continued in the interval; in fact, fourteen days after the treaty was signed the greatest land battle of the war was fought at New Orleans. Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau on April 4, 1814, but the final signing of the peace negotiations at Vienna did not occur until June 9, 1815, or a year, two months and five days after the abdication. An exception to an almost general rule as to a long duration in war settlements was found in the peace negotiations in 1871 between Germany and France by Bismarck and Thiers. The armistice was signed on January 28, the final treaty, called the Treaty of Frankfort, being signed on May 10 and ratified on May 23. Thiers himself has given the world in his "Memoirs," a detailed account of his interview with Bismarck as to Germany's terms. The account calls for republication here, alike for the complete transformation that had now occurred in Franco-German relations, and for the light it sheds on the German character when flushed with complete victory, in contrast to the German character as revealed in the negotiations of May and June, 1919. Thiers had gone to Versailles from Bordeaux, where the French National Assembly, recently elected, had made him the executive head of the State Government, really President of France, altho not having the title. He describes how he was received by Bismarck in a room where, on the mantel, were standing two bottles that were acting as candlesticks. He writes: "I trembled to broach the question of the conditions of peace; however, it had to be done. 'Let us come now to the great question,' said I to the Count. "He replied: 'I do not wish to jockey you, it would be unbecoming. I might speak of Europe, as they do on your side, and demand in her name that you should give back Savoy and Nice to their rightful owners. I will do nothing of this kind, and will only speak to you of Germany and France. I already asked you for Alsace and certain parts of Lorraine. I will give you back Nancy, altho the Minister for War wants to keep it; but we shall keep Metz for our own security. All the rest of French Lorraine will remain yours.' "Count Bismarck looked at me to guess what I was thinking. Mastering my emotion, I answered coldly: 'You had only spoken of the German portion of Lorraine.' 666 'Certainly,' said he, 'but we must have Metz; we must have it for our own safety.' 66 "Go on,' I said, wishing to know the whole extent of his exactions before I should answer. "Count Bismarck then opened the question of money. 'When I saw you in November,' he said, 'I mentioned a sum to you. That can not now be the same figure, for since then we have suffered and spent enormously. I had asked you for four milliards: to-day we must have six.' ""Six milliards!' I exclaimed; 'but no one in the whole world could find them. It was the soldiers who suggested these figures to you; it was no financier.' The cold, determined, even scornful tone of my reply put Bismarck out of countenance. He listened without saying a word, and I added, 'but you are not to think I admit your demands: Alsace, Metz, a French city, six milliards, all that—it is out of the question! We will discuss these terms, and to discuss we must have time; let us extend the armistice.' "If I had uttered a word implying an absolute refusal of any cession of territory, it would have meant immediate rupture, war, disaster on disaster. I confined myself, therefore, to refraining from accepting the claims put forward, at the same time without giving the idea that I rejected them. 'I will not jockey any more than you,' I said finally, 'but I shall let you know my terms. . and then, if you demand impossibilities, I shall withdraw and leave you to govern France.' With these words in his ears Count Bismarck left me to go to the King to ask for an extension of the armistice. It was granted until midnight on Sunday." Another meeting took place the next day, of which Thiers records: |