It is inconceivable that officers and men of Allied armies had not been guilty of violations of international law during more than four years of fighting. But only Germans were to be tried, and the German Government bound itself to hand over for trial before Allied tribunals all whose names should be handed in. This impossible provision in itself put Germany in hopeless default from the moment her representatives signed the treaty. Only if the Germans had been an uncivilized tribe of savages could such provisions have been executed. Similarly, the trial of Kaiser Wilhelm, too, before an impartial tribunal would have been a splendid measure. But the treaty bound the Germans to an unheard-of thing in international relations. They were obliged to confess their rulers’ guilt and their own, as a people, before the trial! And the treaty gave no promise, as it should have done, that the question of the responsibility for the war would be fairly gone into by a court of justice, with all the evidence before it. If the purpose of the men who made the Treaty of Versailles was not vindictiveness but a desire to get at the truth, they would have coupled their demand for the trial of the Kaiser with a guarantee that all the documentary evidence on both sides should be brought into court. Only in this way could a fair trial have been had. The penalties clauses of the treaty, therefore, violate the accepted principles of law as well as the dictates of fair play and common sense. If the treaty had limited itself to the restoration of the loot of the recent war, no exception could have been taken. But Germany was summoned to give up art treasures and other plunder of the long ago. Was this done because the restitution was a matter of justice or to remove ancient grievances that stood in the way of the reconciliation of peoples? If so, the victors should have promised to give back to one another and to neutral nations--and in many instances to the vanquished--the more notorious examples of loot in their own national galleries and museums. This was a trifling matter, but it showed the spirit of the treaty.