As an example of the Council’s unmethodical procedure, and of its slipshod way of tackling important work, the following brief sketch of a discussion which was intended to be decisive and final, but ended in mere waste of time, may be worth recording.  The topic mooted was disarmament.  The Anglo-Saxon plenipotentiaries, feeling that they owed it to their doctrines and their peoples to ease the military burdens of the latter and lessen temptations to acts of violence, favored a measure by which armaments should be reduced forthwith.  The Italian delegates had put forward the thesis, which was finally accepted, that if Austria, for instance, was to be forbidden to keep more than a certain number of troops under arms, the prohibition should be extended to all the states of which Austria had been composed, and that in all these cases the ratio between the population and the army should be identical.  Accordingly, the spokesmen of the various countries interested were summoned to take cognizance of the decision and intimate their readiness to conform to it.

M. Paderewski listened respectfully to the decree, and then remarked:  “According to the accounts received from the French military authorities, Germany still has three hundred and fifty thousand soldiers in Silesia.”  “No,” corrected M. Clemenceau, “only three hundred thousand.”  “I accept the correction,” replied the Polish Premier.  “The difference, however, is of no importance to my contention, which is that according to the symptoms reported we Poles may have to fight the Germans and to wage the conflict single-handed.  As you know, we have other military work on hand.  I need only mention our strife with the Bolsheviki.  If we are deprived of effective means of self-defense, on the one hand, and told to expect no help from the Allies, on the other hand, the consequence will be what every intelligent observer foresees.  Now three hundred thousand Germans is no trifle to cope with.  If we confront them with an inadequate force and are beaten, what then?” “Undoubtedly,” exclaimed M. Clemenceau, “if the Germans were victorious in the east of Europe the Allies would have lost the war.  And that is a perspective not to be faced.”

M. Bratiano spoke next.  “We too,” he said, “have to fight the Bolsheviki on more than one front.  This struggle is one of life and death to us.  But it concerns, if only in a lesser degree, all Europe, and we are rendering services to the Great Powers by the sacrifices we thus offer up.  Is it desirable, is it politic, to limit our forces without reference to these redoubtable tasks which await them?  Is it not incumbent on the Powers to allow these states to grow to the dimensions required for the discharge of their functions?” “What you advance is true enough for the moment,” objected M. Clemenceau; “but you forget that our limitations are not to be applied at once.  We fix a term after the expiry of which the strength of the armies will be reduced.  We have taken