Another great disappointment was the failure of the Peace Conference to recognize the right of Belgium to retain the territories conquered by her soldiers in German East Africa. Here President Wilson’s mandate idea was used to deny the Belgian claim. German East Africa was to be administered as a sacred trust for civilization by Great Britain. No African annexations were countenanced by the Treaty of Versailles. By dint of vigorous protest and the personal intervention of King Albert, Belgium secured a rectification of frontiers in the Kongo colony. But this was a matter of private negotiation with Great Britain and did not enter into the Peace Conference bargains. The credit due to Belgium for having resisted the Germans in 1914 and for having carried on throughout the war, maintaining an army at the front despite all obstacles, was not denied by the Entente Powers, and they believed that they had done her full justice, within the limits of possibility during the Peace Conference and in the subsequent negotiations. Release from war debts, priority of reparations payments, and generous aid in getting back from Germany the loot of the war can be cited as tangible evidences of gratitude and good will. The failure to recognize the equality of Belgium in post-bellum councils rankled, however, and made it easy for politicians to turn the bitter experiences of the Peace Conference to their own benefit. Consequently we have seen in Belgium since the war the evolution of an unhappy foreign policy opposed to the political and economic interests of the country. This policy has jeopardized, almost nullified, the excellent results of the marvelous progress toward rehabilitation accomplished by the entire people in 1919 and 1920. After the World War all the belligerents sorely needed peace, the small states even more than the great powers, and the countries that had suffered by enemy military occupation most of all. The Belgian Government had lived entirely on credit during an exile of four years. The normal revenues of the country had been appropriated by the enemy. The blockade had disorganized industry. Belgium’s foreign markets had been lost to the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. The carrying and transit trade had become wholly disorganized. The country was flooded with German marks, and was partly looted; 40 per cent of its inhabitants were out of work. The years of German occupation had fostered the Flemish language movement, had increased trade-unionism 300 per cent, had introduced the impersonal element in production on a large scale, and had made the people profoundly unwilling to go back to an almost feudal régime in politics and in many of the leading industries.