of war.  Territorially, therefore, the dismemberment of Germany was obligatory; the annexation of the Saar Valley, together with its six hundred thousand Teuton inhabitants, was necessary to France, and either the annexation of the left bank of the Rhine or its transformation into a detached state to be occupied and administered by the French until Germany pays the last farthing of the indemnity.  Further, Austria must be deprived of the right of determining her own mode of existence and constrained to abandon the idea of becoming one of the federated states of the German Republic, and, if possible, northern Germany should be kept entirely separate from southern.  The Allies should divide the Teutons in order to sway them.  All Germany’s other frontiers should be delimitated in a like spirit.  And at the same time the work of knitting together the peoples and nations of Europe and forming them into a friendly sodality was to go forward without interruption.

“How to promote our interests in the Rhineland,” wrote M. Maurice Barres,[297] “is a life-and-death question for us.  We are going to carry to the Rhine our military and, I hope, our economic frontier.  The rest will follow in its own good time.  The future will not fail to secure for us the acquiescence of the population of the Rhineland, who will live freely under the protection of our arms, their faces turned toward Paris.”

Financially it was proposed that the Teutons should be forced to indemnify France, Belgium, and the other countries for all the damage they had inflicted upon them; to pay the entire cost of the war, as well as the pensions to widows, orphans, and the mutilated.  And the military occupation of their country should be maintained until this huge debt is wholly wiped out.

A Nationalist organ,[298] in a leading article, stated with brevity and clearness the prevailing view of Germany’s obligations.  Here is a characteristic passage:  “She is rich, has reserves derived from many years of former prosperity; she can work to produce and repair all the evil she has done, rebuild all the ruins she has accumulated, and restore all the fortunes she has destroyed, however irksome the burden.”  After analyzing Doctor Helfferich’s report published six years ago, the article concluded, “Germany must pay; she disposes of the means because she is rich; if she refuses we must compel her without hesitation and without ruth.”

As France, whose cities and towns and very soil were ruined, could not be asked to restore these places at her own expense and tax herself drastically like her allies, the Americans and British, the prior and privileged right to receive payment on her share of the indemnity should manifestly appertain to her.  Her allies and associates should, it was argued, accordingly waive their money claims until hers were satisfied in full.  Moreover, as France’s future expenditure on her army of occupation, on the administration of her colonies and of the annexed territories, must