What then is to be done?  The tentative suggestions of this chapter may appear to the reader inadequate.  But the opportunity was missed at Paris during the six months which followed the Armistice, and nothing we can do now can repair the mischief wrought at that time.  Great privation and great risks to society have become unavoidable.  All that is now open to us is to redirect, so far as lies in our power, the fundamental economic tendencies which underlie the events of the hour, so that they promote the re-establishment of prosperity and order, instead of leading us deeper into misfortune.

We must first escape from the atmosphere and the methods of Paris.  Those who controlled the Conference may bow before the gusts of popular opinion, but they will never lead us out of our troubles.  It is hardly to be supposed that the Council of Four can retrace their steps, even if they wished to do so.  The replacement of the existing Governments of Europe is, therefore, an almost indispensable preliminary.

I propose then to discuss a program, for those who believe that the Peace of Versailles cannot stand, under the following heads: 

1.  The Revision of the Treaty.

2.  The settlement of inter-Ally indebtedness.

3.  An international loan and the reform of the currency.

4.  The relations of Central Europe to Russia.

1. The Revision of the Treaty

Are any constitutional means open to us for altering the Treaty?  President Wilson and General Smuts, who believe that to have secured the Covenant of the League of Nations outweighs much evil in the rest of the Treaty, have indicated that we must look to the League for the gradual evolution of a more tolerable life for Europe.  “There are territorial settlements,” General Smuts wrote in his statement on signing the Peace Treaty, “which will need revision.  There are guarantees laid down which we all hope will soon be found out of harmony with the new peaceful temper and unarmed state of our former enemies.  There are punishments foreshadowed over most of which a calmer mood may yet prefer to pass the sponge of oblivion.  There are indemnities stipulated which cannot be enacted without grave injury to the industrial revival of Europe, and which it will be in the interests of all to render more tolerable and moderate....  I am confident that the League of Nations will yet prove the path of escape for Europe out of the ruin brought about by this war.”  Without the League, President Wilson informed the Senate when he presented the Treaty to them early in July, 1919, “...long-continued supervision of the task of reparation which Germany was to undertake to complete within the next generation might entirely break down;[158] the reconsideration and revision of administrative arrangements and restrictions which the Treaty prescribed, but which it recognized might not provide lasting advantage or be entirely fair if too long enforced, would be impracticable.”