When the wild joy of the armistice celebration had spent itself, public opinion in the victorious countries reacted against the terms of the armistice, against the very fact that an armistice had been signed. It was recognized that there had been no clean-cut, unquestioned military victory, such as generally decides the fortunes of a war. The enemy’s front was unbroken: he was still on the soil of France and had not been driven out of Belgium. The armistice conditions provided for a gradual withdrawal from France, Belgium, and Alsace-Lorraine, and the gradual occupation by the victors of the Rhine provinces and bridge-heads. The German army retired with artillery and arms and other war material, and the method of advance of the victors deprived the armies of appearing dramatically as liberators and conquerors. And then there were too many victors! The details of the advance were as meticulously arranged among allies as between the allies and the enemy. It was felt that Germany, after four years of being the top dog, had suddenly managed to “get out from under” before the storm broke that would give her army and her people a taste of the medicine they had been administering in big doses ever since 1914. Consequently there was a determination that crying “Kamerad!” was not going to enable Germany to avoid the disagreeable consequences of losing the war. There was far more hatred, bitterness, resentment, than there would have been had the Allied armies beaten the Germans in the field, chased them back to their own country, and secured an unconditional surrender on German soil. The very fact of so much hatred after the armistice indicated that the military superiority of the victors had not been sufficiently demonstrated. For hatred is born of fear and nourished by fear. After a fight to the finish, the sane man with normal instincts simply cannot hate. If he knows that he has knocked out his opponent, his natural instinct is to extend a hand good-naturedly to help the other fellow to his feet. No matter what the opponent may have done, he is considered to have paid the penalty by the punishment he received in the losing fight. The trouble with the world in November, 1918, was that there had been no knock-out. More than that, Germany had been worsted by a coalition which was doomed to disruption after the fighting was over, unless all its members should be willing to continue to grant to one another equal opportunities and privileges and assume for one another equal burdens and responsibilities, just as they had done during the war.