Among the errors of the Paris settlement we can point out: (1) creating a League of Nations whose charter provides for the permanent hegemony of five nations, with widely divergent interests; (2) reserving the advantages of the treaties to a few nations but making all members of the League responsible for their execution; (3) treating the vanquished enemies as criminals without right to counsel or appeal to an impartial tribunal, but at the same time not providing jailers to keep them in prison during the period of punishment; (4) denying the principle of reciprocity in contractual obligations; (5) declaring that the treaties are based upon the policy of freeing peoples from alien rule, but limiting the application of the policy to a few especially favored peoples, and violating it in other cases; (6) failing to apply one weight and one measure in passing upon the claims to reparations of peoples who had suffered in the World War through aggression, invasion, and the violation of international law; and (7) maintaining the old balance of power theory. When we analyze the treaty, and study the course of the negotiations, we see that the first six errors are the children, that is, the outgrowth, of the seventh. It is possible to explain all the treaties by keeping in mind that the dominating idea of the Peace Conference was the recognition of the transcendent rights of the powers that had big armies and navies. The battle had been to the strong; so likewise should be the spoils. A new balance of power had to be created by virtue of which the strong could remain permanently strong by compounding their rivalries and by allowing one another strategic frontiers and the privilege of forming new international combinations for the purpose of keeping weak the peoples that had been conquered. The methods of waging war and of gauging strength, however, had radically changed during the nineteenth century. No longer were man-power and geographical position decisive elements. Coal, iron, oil, and access to food-stuffs and raw materials had become vital factors in the power of nations. Far from being discouraged by the alarming condition of international relations five years after the war, we should feel relieved that we have been afforded a salutary demonstration of the futility of the Paris peace settlement at so little cost. If our eyes are now opened to the dangers of the international game, as it has been played since 1918, there is yet a chance to mend our ways before irreparable damage is done. Most of those who are writing on European politics are neither cynics nor pessimists, and they do not record the failure of these years with ghoulish delight. In discussing the possible dangers ahead they do not relish the rôle of Cassandra. The purpose of writing is to show how policies, approved in the beginning by public opinion, are likely to work out. Is the game worth the candle? That is for the reader to decide.