history of modern times there is no other example of a civilized Power obliging a state to abandon its people to foreign domination as an equivalent for a cash payment.”  One of the most influential press organs complained that the Treaty “bartered German men, women, and children for coal; subjected some districts with a thoroughly German population to an obligatory plebiscite[326] under interested supervision; severed others without any consultation from the Fatherland; delivered over the proceeds of German industry to the greed of foreign capitalists for an indefinite period; ... spread over the whole country a network of alien commissions to be paid by the German nation; withdrew streams, rivers, railways, the air service, numerous industrial establishments, the entire economic system, from the sovereignty of the German state by means either of internationalization or financial control; conferred on foreign inspectors rights such as only the satraps of absolute monarchs in former ages were empowered to exercise; in a word, they put an end to the existence of the German nation as such.  Germany would become a colony of white slaves...."[327]

Fortunately for the Allies, the reproach of exchanging human beings for coal was seen by their leaders to be so damaging that they modified the odious clause that warranted it.  Even the comments of the friendly neutral press were extremely pungent.  They found fault with the Treaty on grounds which, unhappily, cannot be reasoned away.  “Why dissimulate it?” writes the foremost of these journals; “this peace is not what we were led to expect.  It dislodges the old dangers, but creates new ones.  Alsace and Lorraine are, it is true, no longer in German hands, but ... irredentism has only changed its camp.  In 1914 Germany put her faith in force because she herself wielded it.  But crushed down under a peace which appears to violate the promises made to her, a peace which in her heart of hearts she will never accept, she will turn toward force anew.  It will stand out as the great misfortune of this Treaty that it has tainted the victory with a moral blight and caused the course of the German revolution to swerve....  The fundamental error of the instrument lies in the circumstance that it is a compromise between two incompatible frames of mind.  It was feasible to restore peace to Europe by pulling down Germany definitely.  But in order to accomplish this it would have been necessary to crush a people of seventy millions and to incapacitate them from rising to their feet again.  Peace could also have been secured by the sole force of right.  But in this case Germany would have had to be treated so considerately as to leave her no grievance to brood over.  M. Clemenceau hindered Mr. Wilson from displaying sufficient generosity to get the moral peace, and Mr. Wilson on his side prevented M. Clemenceau from exercising severity enough to secure the material peace.  And so the result, which it was easy to foresee, is a regime devoid of the real guaranties of durability."[328]