Instead of helping the German Republic to a new life, the policy of punishment and fear was adopted, a policy outlined by Professor Andler of the Sorbonne on March 4, 1917. Said M. Andler: Politics may have the right to continue the work of war against a preying nation, even into the time of peace.... Germany must know that this continuation of war into peace is possible if she refuses to give the reparations and pledges which the law demands. There are economic methods of breaking the arrogance of the German agrarians. There are economic methods of breaking even the new prosperity of the German peasants. There is a way of checking for ever the forward impulse of German industry and of curbing the great industrial capitalism, in coalition with the junkers and, at the same time, the German working-people who have demanded their share in the casting of the net attempted by big industries. There are certain forms of the industrial and agricultural boycott, under which the German people, surrounded by hostility equivalent to the worst kind of blockade, would no longer be able to continue the proud prosperity of its life before the war. The rich classes would be ruined; the people could no longer bring up their superfluity of children, formerly so easily absorbed by a flourishing industry; the peasants and laborers of the decimated population would be reduced to emigration. But they would go, these German immigrants, to countries forewarned, countries that would no longer permit any organized espionage, nor any sly infiltration into their affairs, nor any masquerade of false naturalization under the Delbrück Law. Then, perhaps, enlightened at last by the disapproval which would cause to weigh heavily on them the political system against which they had never known how to revolt and which they had tolerated in order to benefit by its military successes, they would again become the modest Germans of 1848. The controlling idea of French policy toward Germany was simply this, that a strong, united, prosperous Germany would never be a changed Germany. The proof demanded of a change of heart on the part of the German people would be their willingness to become again “the modest Germans of 1848.” The political unity of Germany must at all costs be destroyed. This was a _sine qua non_ of security for France, as we have explained elsewhere, and the execution of the treaty had as its principal object to prevent the economic rehabilitation and the political unity of the German peoples in Europe. In reviewing events in Germany since 1918 we must keep this fact in mind. No Government, whatever it accomplished, would be considered as showing works meet for repentance. The Reparations Commission, backed by a strong army, could ask whatever it wanted to ask--no limits were set either of time or amount--and thus prevent the economic and political rehabilitation of Germany.