Whatever the sum might be, when it had been laid down in the treaty what damage was to be indemnified, the French negotiators claimed sixty-five per cent., leaving thirty-five per cent. for all the others.

What was necessary was to lay down proportions, not the actual amount of the sum.  It was impossible to say at once what amount the damages would reach:  that was the business of the Reparations Commission.

Instead of inserting in the treaty the enormous figures spoken of, the quality, not the quantity, of the damages to be indemnified was laid down.  But the standard of reckoning led to fantastic figures.

An impossible amount had to be paid, and the delegations were discussing then the very same things that are being discussed now.  The American experts saw the gross mistake of the other delegations, and put down as the maximum payment 325 milliard marks up to 1951, the first payment to be 25 milliard marks in 1921.  So was invented the Reparations Commission machine, a thing which has no precedent in any treaty, being a commission with sovereign powers to control the life of the whole of Germany.

In actual truth no serious person has ever thought that Germany can pay more than a certain number of milliards a year, no one believes that a country can be subjected to a regime of control for thirty years.

But the directing line of work of the treaties has been to break down Germany, to cut her up, to suffocate her.

France had but one idea, and later on did not hesitate to admit it:  to dismember Germany, to destroy her unity.  By creating intolerable conditions of life, taking away territory on the frontier, putting large districts under military occupation, delaying or not making any diplomatic appointments and carrying on communications solely through military commissions, a state of things was brought about which must inevitably tend to weaken the constitutional unity of the German Empire.  Taking away from Germany 84 thousand kilometres of territory, nearly eight million inhabitants and all the most important mineral resources, preventing the unity of the German people and the six million and five hundred thousand of German Austrians to which Austria was then reduced, putting the whole German country under an interminable series of controls—­all this did more harm to German unity than would have been done by taking the responsibility of a forcible and immediate division to which the Germans could not have consented and which the Allies could not have claimed to impose.

What has been said about Germany and the Versailles Treaty can be said about all the other conquered countries and all the other treaties, with merely varying proportions in each case.

The verdict that has to be passed on them will very soon be shown by facts—­if indeed facts have not shown already that, in great measure, what had been laid down cannot be carried out.  One thing is certain, that the actual treaties threaten to ruin conquerors and conquered, that they have not brought peace to Europe, but conditions of war and violence.  In Clemenceau’s words, the treaties are a way of going on with war.