9.-PORTS, WATERWAYS AND RAILWAYS.

(a) Provisions follow substantially those of German Treaty.

(b) Austria to have unfettered access to Adriatic and to grant Czecho-Slovakia similar access over Austrian territory to Fiume and Trieste.

(c) Danube from Ulm to area of jurisdiction of Danube Commission to be internationalised. Austria to be deprived of representation on Danube Commission.

10.-LABOUR CONVENTION.

Provisions of Labour Convention to be accepted in full. 11.-RELATIONS WITH GERMANY.

No union with Germany to be effected without consent of Council of League of Nations.

COUNT BROCKDORFF-RANTZAU ON THE

GERMAN TREATY.

Letter addressed to the President of the Peace Conference under date May 13th, 1919.

Sir,-In accordance with my note of May 9th, I beg to forward the following observations of the economic Commission charged with studying the effects of the proposed terms of peace on the condition of the population of Germany.

In the course of the last two generations, Germany has changed from an agricultural State to an industrial. The agricultural State could feed forty million men. As an industrial State Germany was capable of ensuring the support of sixty-seven millions. In 1913, imports of foodstuffs amounted to about 12,000,000 tons. Before the war, about 15,000,000 men in Germany were dependent directly or indirectly on foreign trade and the shipping industry, being employed on working up raw material from abroad.

According to the provisions of the Peace Treaty, Germany must surrender all her commercial shipping fit for overseas trade and all vessels newly completed. Moreover for the next five years her yards must be devoted in the first instance to construction for the Allies and Associated Governments. In addition Germany is to lose her colonies. The whole of her possessions are to fall into the hands of the Allied and Associated Governments, are to serve in part to meet the indemnity demands, are to be put into liquidation, and are to be submitted to whatever economic measures the Allies may see fit to impose in time of peace.

By the operation of the territorial clauses of the Peace Treaty an important part of the cereal and potato producing area in the east will be lost. That will mean the disappearance of twenty-one per cent. of Germany's home-grown supplies of these commodities. Our productivity in foodstuffs will undergo a further diminution. First of all the importation of certain raw materials for the German fertiliser industry will be restricted, and in addition that industry and others will be handicapped by coal shortage, for the Peace Treaty provides that we must lose almost a third of our coal output, while huge deliveries of coal are imposed on us for the next ten years. More than that, according to the Peace Treaty, Germany must cede to her neighbours almost three-fourths of her steel output, and more than three-fifths of her zinc output.

After such a limitation of her own output, after this economic handicap resulting from the loss of coal, of her merchant shipping and of her overseas possessions Germany will no longer be in a position to obtain adequate raw materials from abroad. At the same time her need for food imports will have sensibly increased. As a consequence Germany will soon find herself incapable of providing work and food for the millions who live on imported goods and commerce. These millions must then emigrate from Germany. But that is technically impossible, for many of the important States of the world will take definite steps to prohibit German immigration. More than that, hundreds of thousands of Germans hailing from countries at war with Germany or from the districts to be ceded will pour into Germany. If the terms of peace are carried out it means literally condemning millions of people in Germany to death, and that so much the more swiftly in that the health of the people has been completely undermined by the blockade, which was actually sharpened during the armistice period.

No relief enterprise, on whatever scale and however permanent, will be capable of setting a term to this sacrifice. Peace will require of the German people more than four-and-a-half years of war in human sacrifice (a million-and-a-quarter killed in battle and more than a million victims of the blockade). We cannot but question whether the delegates of the Allied and Associated Allies have realised the consequences that must inevitably ensue if Germany, which is to-day thickly populated, united economically with the whole world, a prosperous industrial country, is reduced to a stage of development corresponding to its economic situation and population of half a century

ago.

The man who signs the Peace Treaty will be pronouncing the death sentence of millions of men, women and children of Germany.

Before submitting other details, I deem it my duty to lay before the delegations of the Allied and Associated countries these considerations in regard to the effect of the Peace Treaty on the problem of German population. If it is desired statistical proofs can be supplied.

I am, Sir, etc.,

GENERAL SMUTS ON THE GERMAN TREATY

I HAVE signed the Peace Treaty, not because I consider it a satisfactory document, but because it is imperatively necessary to close the war; because the world needs peace above all, and nothing could be more fatal than the continuance of the state of suspense between war and peace. The months since the armistice was signed have perhaps been as upsetting, unsettling, and ruinous to Europe as the previous four years of war. I look upon the Peace Treaty as the close of those two chapters of war and armistice, and only on that ground do I agree to it.

I say this now, not in criticism, but in faith; not because I wish to find fault with the work done, but rather because I feel that in the Treaty we have not yet achieved the real peace to which our peoples were looking, and because I feel that the real work of making peace will only begin after this Treaty has been signed, and a definite halt has thereby been called to the destructive passions that have been desolating Europe for nearly five years. This Treaty is simply the liquidation of the war situation in the world.

The promise of the new life, the victory of the great human ideals, for which the peoples have shed their blood and their treasure without stint, the fulfilment of their aspirations towards a new international order and a fairer, better world are not written in this Treaty, and will not be written in treaties. "Not in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth," as the Great Master said, must the foundations of the new order be laid. A new heart must be given, not only to our enemies, but also to us; a contrite spirit for the woes which have overwhelmed the world; a spirit of pity, mercy, and forgiveness for the sins and wrongs which we have suffered. A new spirit of generosity and humanity, born in the hearts of the peoples in this great hour of common suffering and sorrow, can alone heal the wounds which have been inflicted on the body of Christendom.

And this new spirit among the peoples will be the solvent for the problems which the statesmen have found too hard at the Conference.

There are territorial settlements which will need revision. There are guarantees laid down, which we all hope will soon be found out of harmony with the new peaceful temper and

unarmed state of our former enemies. There are punishments fore-shadowed, over most of which a calmer mood may yet prefer to pass the sponge of oblivion. There are indemnities stipulated, which cannot be exacted without grave injury to the industrial revival of Europe, and which it will be in the interests of all to render more tolerable and moderate.

There are numerous pin-pricks, which will cease to pain under the healing influences of the new international atmosphere. The real peace of the peoples ought to follow, complete, and amend the peace of the statesmen.

In this Treaty, however, two achievements of far-reaching importance for the world are definitely recorded. The one is the destruction of Prussian militarism, the other is the institution of the League of Nations. I am confident the League of Nations will yet prove the path of escape for Europe out of the ruin brought about by this war.

But the League is as yet only a form. It still requires the quickening life, which can only come from the active interest and the vitalising contact of the peoples themselves. The new creative spirit, which is once more moving among the peoples in their anguish, must fill the institution with life and with inspiration for the pacific ideals born of this war, and so convert it into a real instrument of progress. In that way the abolition of militarism, in this Treaty unfortunately confined to the enemy, may soon come as a blessing and relief to the Allied peoples as well.

And the enemy peoples should at the earliest possible date join the League, and in collaboration with the Allied peoples learn to practise the great lesson of this war-that not in separate ambitions or in selfish domination but in common service for the great human causes lies the true path of national prog

ress.

This joint collaboration is especially necessary to-day for the reconstruction of a ruined and broken world. The war has resulted not only in the utter defeat of the enemy armies, but has gone immeasurably further. We witness the collapse of the whole political and economic fabric of Central and Eastern Europe. Unemployment, starvation, anarchy, war, disease, and despair stalk through the land.

Unless the victors can effectively extend a helping hand to the defeated and broken peoples, a large part of Europe is threatened with exhaustion and decay. Russia has already walked into the night, and the risk that the rest may follow is very grave indeed. The effects of this disaster would not be