The British Parliament ratified the treaty without debate. Naturally. For, like the Treaty of Vienna a hundred years earlier, it added greatly to Great Britain’s already overwhelming world power. The continental powers were weak and disrupted, incapable of threatening in the near future “the peace of the world” as Downing Street understands that term; that is, of contesting with the mistress of the seas extra-European markets and intercontinental carrying-trade. German naval power was destroyed. German colonial and commercial ambitions had received a serious setback. Russia was no longer a menace to British supremacy in Asia. The Treaty of Versailles established new safeguards to India by recognizing the British protectorate over Egypt, by ignoring the plea of Persia to be a signatory or at least a beneficiary of the treaty, by making no provision for the future of Asiatic and Transcaucasian Russia, and by giving international sanction to British secret treaties, no matter what unknown provisions those treaties might contain. It made Great Britain the dominant power in Africa. It accepted the right of the British cabinet to speak, and sign, for the 300,000,000 inhabitants of India. Above all, it provided that the United States should underwrite the aggrandized British Empire, with a self-governing population of only 60,000,000, by entering a League of Nations in which the British were to have six votes and the United States, with its self-governing population of 100,000,000, one vote. It was not until later that British public opinion began to realize the danger of a weak Germany in Europe--the danger to prosperity, through disorganization of trade, and the danger to security, through the looming up of another would-be dominant power in Europe. The Treaty of Versailles was subject to long and penetrating criticism in the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Clear-headed and far-sighted men did not cease to protest against the treaty on the same ground as American senators: (1) fear that national interests had been sacrificed to questionable international advantages; (2) uncertainty as to the adequacy of the means of enforcing the provisions in the treaty; (3) dissatisfaction with the League of Nations Covenant as it stood in the treaty; (4) doubt as to the wisdom of having incorporated in one document the solution of two different questions, imposing peace upon Germany and setting up the machinery of a new world order.