The Reparation Commission in announcing its decision did not particularize as between different claimants or as between different heads of claim, and merely stated a lump sum figure. Their figure was 132 milliards; that is to say, about 58 per cent of the sums claimed. This decision was in no way concerned with Germany’s capacity to pay, and was simply an assessment, intended to be judicial, as to the sum justly due under the heads of claim established by the Treaty of Versailles. The decision was unanimous, but only in face of sharp differences of opinion. It is not suitable or in accordance with decency to set up a body of interested representatives to give a judicial decision in their own case. This arrangement was an offspring of the assumption which runs through the Treaty that the Allies are incapable of doing wrong, or even of partiality. Nothing has been published in England about the discussions which led up to this conclusion. But M. Poincaré, at one time President of the Reparation Commission and presumably well–informed about its affairs, has lifted a corner of the veil in an article published in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ for May 15, 1921. He there divulges the fact that the final result was a compromise between the French and the British representatives, the latter of whom endeavored to fix the figure at 104 milliards, and defended this adjudication with skilful and even passionate advocacy.[77] When the decision of the Reparation Commission was first announced, and was found to abate so largely the claims lodged with it, I hailed it, led away a little perhaps by its very close agreement with my own predictions, as a great triumph for justice in international affairs. So, in a measure, I still think it. The Reparation Commission went a considerable way in disavowing the veracity of the claims of the Allied Governments. Indeed, their reduction of the claims for items other than pensions and allowances must have been very great since the claims for pensions, being capable of more or less exact calculation,[78] can hardly have been subject to an initial error of anything approaching 42 per cent. If, for example, they reduced the claim for pensions and allowances from 95 to 80 milliards, they must have reduced the other claims from 130 milliards to 52 milliards, that is to say, by 60 per cent. Yet even so, on the data now available, I do not believe that their adjudication could be maintained before an impartial tribunal. The figure of 104 milliards, attributed by M. Poincaré to Sir John Bradbury, is probably the nearest we shall get to a strictly impartial assessment.