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be open to invasion by Powers whose full command of the sea she would be in no position to question. Her navy was reduced to six battleships, six light cruisers, twelve torpedo-boats and no submarines. The world noted with deep satisfaction how time had brought its revenges, since it was on the anniversary of the murderous attack upon the Lusitania that the Germans there in Versailles learned of this sharp limitation to their sea power.

Germany forfeited much territory that had been the spoils of former wars and forays. Most important of all was Alsace and Lorraine, which were returned to France under conditions that forced Germany to admit the crime of seizing them. She yielded much to Poland, and there were small cessions to Belgium. Because of her destruction of French coal-mines, she had to give up the Saar Valley to France with the right to work Saar mines. Ancient French dominion over this territory was recognized by the provision made for a plebiscite after fifteen years to determine whether the populations preferred a continuance of commission government under the League of Nations, union with France, or union with Germany. Germany's colonies, near and remote, those outposts of her trade and military power which she had established at great cost and governed with brutality, she surrendered altogether. Many of them were committed into the keeping of the League of Nations for later determination. Her rights in the Shantung Province of China, including railroads, mines, and all her property there, she ceded to Japan, but by assurances, not included in the treaty, Japan promised to restore the province to China.

The eighth section of the treaty would long engage the attention of men who held to the wholesome belief that sin unatoned for offered a bad example. The atonement here exacted was heavy to a degree that would have transcended all German powers of imagination five years before. Germany acknowledged that she was responsible for all the loss and damage inflicted on the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals; and she engaged to make reparation by money payments for all damages caused to civilians under seven categories embracing acts of war and acts contrary to the laws of war. She was to pay within two years twenty billion marks in gold, goods, ships, or other specified terms of payment, her total obligations to be determined by a Committee of Inquiry and made known to her not later than May 1, 1921. In acknowledgment of this debt she was required to issue gold bonds to the amount of twenty billion marks, payable not later than May 1, 1921, and forty billion marks between 1921 and 1926, with interest at 5 per cent.; besides undertaking to deliver gold bonds to the amount of forty billion marks under further terms to be fixt by the committee. While

it was intimated that the grand total of damages assessed might exceed her ability to pay, the sums demanded, whatever they might be, would become a charge upon all her revenues with priority over the service or payment of any domestic loan. Some small part of Germany's pre-war debt would be assumed by the Governments to which she ceded territory, but Alsace and Lorraine were an exception to this rule, France not to take over any part of the German debt, since Germany had treated her in that way when she seized upon these provinces in 1871.

Germany's admission that the war was a crime and that she bore the responsibility for it was made complete by her assent to the purpose of the Allied Powers to put William Hohenzollern on trial, not under criminal law, but "for a supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties." The surrender of the former Emperor was to be "requested" of Holland and a tribunal was to be made up of one judge from each of the five great Powers which would try him. Moreover, Germany was to hand over for trial by military tribunal "persons accused of committing acts in violation of the laws and customs of war." For many years to come the hunting down of the trails of these criminals promised to engage the world's attention.

Other points in the treaty were these: Germany to renounce all her territorial and political rights outside of Europe; Germany to recognize the total independence of German Austria, Czecho-Slovakia and Poland; all German forts for fifty kilometers east of the Rhine to be razed; all Heligoland fortifications to be demolished and the Kiel Canal to be open to all nations; Germany to revert to prewar "most favored nations" tariffs without discrimination; Germany to accept highly detailed provisions for the internationalization of roads and rivers; Germany to pay shipping damages, ton for ton; Germany to devote her resources to rebuilding the devastated regions; Germany to accept the League of Nations in principle but without immediate membership in the League; Germany to cede to Belgium 382 square miles of territory between Luxemburg and Holland; all Hohenzollern property in Alsace-Lorraine to go to France without payment; France to gain possession of the Saar coal-mines regardless of the result of a future plebiscite; Germany to accept abrogation of the Brest-Litovsk treaty; Germany to permit the formation of no militaristic societies; the German army to be demobilized within two months after peace was signed; the Allies to retain German hostages until persons accused of war crimes were surrendered; Germany to lease to Czecho-Slovakia wharfage in Hamburg and Stettin for ninety-nine years; the Rhine to be placed under control of an Allied-German commission; parts of the Elbe, Oder, Danube, and

Nieman rivers to be internationalized. In the matter of Entente claims for damages it was said that the American part reached about $1,000,000,000 and that claims growing out of losses inflicted by German submarines reached $600,000,000.

It was a terrible punishment that the German people and their mad rulers had brought upon themselves. Not only was their military power to be destroyed, but the military spirit would be crusht

[graphic]

THE GERMAN DELEGATES LEAVING THE GRAND TRIANON
AFTER RECEIVING THE PEACE TERMS

Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, the head of the delegation, is seen at the point marked "X," on the wall

out of them by the stern but necessary conditions imposed. How great would be their moral and spiritual suffering we could not know, for the world had its doubts about the German conscience. The material hurt could more accurately be measured. They had become one of the world's greatest commercial nations, their trade was rapidly expanding, they had established commercial strongholds all over the world, and their merchant fleets were giving England cause for deep concern. Now they were cribbed within their own frontiers, their ships gone, their foreign trade had vanished and they

were condemned to half a century of remitting toil to repay the loss they had caused and repair the ruin they had wrought. Could Germany live under these conditions? All the world could see that they were terribly severe. But the world knew, too, that they were just. They seemed even lenient compared with the terms a victorious Germany would have imposed upon an enslaved world had she won the

war.

After the meeting, the German delegates were first to leave the Trianon. Before they appeared at the outer door, the military guard of the palace had been withdrawn so as to avoid giving any semblance of military honors. Brockdorff-Rantzau and Landsberg came out first, and then the others. The whole party were speedily shown into automobiles, which left under a British and French escort, moving through crowded streets, where the silence was absolute and oppressive.1

Principal Sources: Associated Press dispatches; The Evening Post, The Times, The World, The Wall Street Journal, New York; "Bulletins" of the National Geographic Society.

III

GERMAN PROTESTS AGAINST THE TREATY AND ENTENTE REPLIES-OUR FIFTH,

COUN

OR "VICTORY" LOAN

OUNT VON BROCKDORFF-RANTZAU, before leaving Germany for Versailles, had declared that Germany would stick to the Fourteen Points of President Wilson's speech of January, 1918, meaning by that to her own interpretation of them. When the German delegation arrived in Versailles it was to the accompaniment of loud German protests against signing any "hard peace." After the Entente terms were made known to the German delegates, Brockdorff-Rantzau, in an extended protest, argued for one thing, that, as the present German Government was not responsible for the war, it should not be punished for the acts of an overthrown predecessor Government. To this Clémenceau quietly replied that Germany "did not act upon the principle she now contends for, either in 1871, as regards France after the proclamation of the Republic, nor in 1917 in regard to Russia after the revolution which abolished the Czarist régime."

"This is the devil's work!" was the comment of Mathias Erzberger, head of the German Armistice Commission, after he learned what the terms were. Germany, he said, was to be left "with less freedom than Egypt had." "It condemns us to death," added Erzberger. "Not to sign would mean the same thing, most likely; but if we are to go under, let us go quickly at least." If Germany was to be denied even that privilege, "then the consequences would be upon the heads of those who made the promises which they never intended to keep, even with the new Germany, and who have therefore brought us to this desert of hopelessness in which we look around in vain for an oasis where springs the well of humanity."

Erzberger's pleadings that a "well of humanity" should be provided for men who had ravaged Belgium and northern France evoked little except scorn from the Entente. Men recalled what were the terms that Erzberger had been in favor of imposing upon the Allies if Germany had been victorious, as set forth in a memorandum written by him late in 1914, and made public on April 20, 1919, as coming from the private secretary of Kurt Eisner, the former

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