No one would regard it as unfair that Germany and the conquered countries should be compelled to reduce their armaments to the measure necessary to guarantee internal order only.

But a distinction must be drawn between military sanctions meant to guarantee peace and those which have the end of ruining the enemy.  In actual truth, in his solemn pronouncements after the entry of the United States into the War, President Wilson had never spoken of a separate disarmament of the conquered countries, but of adequate guarantees given and received that national armaments should be reduced to the smallest point compatible with internal order.  Assurances given and received:  that is to say an identical situation as between conquerors and conquered.

No one can deny the right of the conqueror to compel the conquered enemy to give up his arms and reduce his military armaments, at any rate for some time.  But on this point too there was useless excess.

I should never have thought of publishing France’s claims.  Bitterness comes that way, responsibility is incurred, in future it may be an argument in your adversary’s hands.  But M. Tardieu has taken this office on himself and has told us all France did, recounting her claims from the acts of the Conference itself.  Reference is easy to the story written by one of the representatives of France, possibly the most efficient through having been in America a long time and having fuller and more intimate knowledge of the American representatives, particularly Colonel House.

Generally speaking, in every claim the French representatives started from an extreme position, and that was not only a state of mind, it was a tactical measure.  Later on, if they gave up any part of their claim, they had the air of yielding, of accepting a compromise.  When their claims were of such an extreme nature that the anxiety they caused, the opposition they raised, was evident, Clemenceau put on an air of moderation and gave way at once.  Sometimes, too, he showed moderation himself, when it suited his purpose, but in reality he only gave way when he saw that it was impossible to get what he wanted.

In points where English and American interests were not involved, given the difficult position in which Lloyd George was placed and Wilson’s utter ignorance of all European questions, with Italy keeping almost entirely apart, the French point of view always came out on top, if slightly modified.  But the original claim was always so extreme that the modification left standing the most radically severe measure against the conquered countries.

Many decisions affecting France were not sufficiently criticized on account of the relations in which the English and Americans stood to France; objections would have looked like ill-will, pleading the enemy’s cause.