Seeking a mitigation of the peace terms, the Germans at Versailles reminded their victors of the repeated assurance given the German people that the Allied and Associated Powers were making war against the Imperial German Government. The distinction had been clearly drawn by President Wilson on several occasions. The pre-armistice correspondence reiterated the difference between a government of the people and a government of the Kaiser. Had not the Germans, by a revolution, rid themselves of their discredited rulers, down to the most insignificant princeling? M. Clemenceau answered, in the name of the victors, that the German people had willed the war and had sustained it; therefore, they could not escape the responsibility for it. And, if the terms of peace were severe, it was not only because justice must be satisfied, but also because reasonable precautions must be taken against an outlaw people, still over sixty million strong. There was much force in M. Clemenceau’s contention, applied to powerful Germany, with her industrial machinery intact, and enjoying a peculiarly advantageous strategic position in central Europe. But this same explanation cannot be given to excuse similar terms imposed upon six million Austrians and seven million Hungarians. As peoples, their responsibility certainly was much less. As new nations, shorn of much of their territory, heavy indemnities were absurd; and refusing the right to ethnographic frontiers on the plea of guarantees for the future was without justification. The Treaty of Versailles, had it only been practicable, was a punishment fitting a crime. The Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon are indefensible from every point of view. “We have Balkanized all that part of Europe,” said Mr. Lloyd George ruefully. He was right. But ineptitude is none the less blameworthy because it is admitted!