have never previously set up a stable government for themselves, but each of them containing large masses of Germans clamouring for reunion with their native land.  The proposal of the Polish Commission that we should place 2,100,000 Germans under the control of a people of a different religion and which has never proved its capacity for stable self-government throughout its history, must, in my judgment, lead sooner or later to a new war in the East of Europe.  What I have said about the Germans is equally true about the Magyars.  There will never be peace in South-Eastern Europe if every little state now coming into being is to have a large Magyar Irredenta within its borders.

I would therefore take as a guiding principle of the peace that as far as is humanly possible the different races should be allocated to their motherlands, and that this human criterion should have precedence over considerations of strategy or economics or communications, which can usually be adjusted by other means.

Secondly, I would say that the duration for the payments of reparation ought to disappear if possible with the generation which made the war.

But there is a consideration in favour of a long-sighted peace which influences me even more than the desire to leave no causes justifying a fresh outbreak thirty years hence.  There is one element in the present condition of nations which differentiates it from the situation as it was in 1815.  In the Napoleonic Wars the countries were equally exhausted, but the revolutionary spirit had spent its force in the country of its birth, and Germany had satisfied the legitimate popular demands for the time being by a series of economic changes which were inspired by courage, foresight and high statesmanship.  Even in Russia the Tsar had effected great reforms which were probably at that time even too advanced for the half-savage population.  The situation is very different now.  The revolution is still in its infancy.  The extreme figures of the Terror are still in command in Russia.  The whole of Europe is filled with the spirit of revolution.  There is a deep sense not only of discontent, but of anger and revolt among the workmen against pre-war conditions.  The whole existing order, in its political, social and economic aspects is questioned by the masses of the population from one end of Europe to the other.  In some countries, like Germany and Russia, the unrest takes the form of open rebellion, in others, like France, Great Britain and Italy, it takes the shape of strikes and of general disinclination to settle down to work, symptoms which are just as much concerned with the desire for political and social change as with wage demands.