I have given the general lines of the Treaty of Versailles.

The other treaties, far less important, inasmuch as the situation of all the losing countries was already well defined, especially as regards territorial questions, by the Treaty of Versailles, are cast in the same mould and contain no essential variation.

Now these treaties constitute an absolutely new fact, and no one can affirm that the Treaty of Versailles derives even remotely from the declarations of the Entente and from Wilson’s solemn pledges uttered in the name of those who took part in the War.

If the terms of the armistice were deeply in contrast with the pledges to which the Entente Powers had bound themselves before the whole world, the Treaty of Versailles and the other treaties deriving therefrom are a deliberate negation of all that had been promised, amounting to a debt of honour, and which had contributed much more powerfully towards the defeat of the enemy than the entry in the field of many fresh divisions.

In the state of extreme exhaustion in which both conquerors and losers found themselves in 1918, in the terrible suffering of the Germanic group of belligerents, deprived for four years of sufficient nourishment and of the most elementary necessaries of life, in the moral collapse which had taken the place of boasting and temerity, the words of Wilson, who pledged himself to a just peace and established its terms, proclaiming them to the world, had completely broken down whatever force of resistance there still remained.  They were the most powerful instruments of victory, and if not the essential cause, certainly not the least important among the causes which brought about the collapse of the Central Empires.

Germany had been deeply hit by the armistice.  Obliged to hand over immediately 5,000 locomotives and 150,000 railway trucks and carriages at the very time when she had to demobilize, during the first months she found her traffic almost completely paralysed.

Every war brings virulent germs of revolution in the vanquished countries.  The war of 1870 gave France the impulsive manifestations of La Commune in exactly the same manner as war gave rise in Germany during the first months after the armistice to a violent revolutionary crisis, overcome not without difficulty and still representing a grave menace.

Forced to surrender immediately a large quantity of live stock, to demobilize when the best part of her railway material had gone, still hampered by the blockade, Germany, against the interest of the Allies themselves, has been obliged to sacrifice her exchange because, in the absence of sufficient help, she has had to buy the most indispensable foodstuffs in neutral countries.  Her paper currency, which at the end of 1918 amounted to twenty-two milliard marks, not excessive as compared with that of other countries, immediately increased with a growing crescendo till it reached, in a very short time, the figure of eighty-eight milliards, thus rendering from the very first the payment of indemnities in gold extremely difficult.