The reason fear enters into the Treaty must be manifest. Take, for instance, the case of France. France had lived under the German menace for half a century. Finally the sword of Damocles had fallen, and almost one-sixth of beautiful France had been laid waste. Her farms, her factories, her villages, had been destroyed; her women ravished and led captive; her children made homeless; her men folk killed. Do we realize that almost 60 per cent. of all the French soldiers under thirty-one years of age were killed in the war? Is it any wonder France could not believe that the German menace was gone forever, and that the world would never again allow German autocracy to overwhelm her? She could not believe it, and for that reason she felt it essential that the terms of the Treaty should be so severe as to leave Germany stripped for generations of any power to wage aggression against beautiful France. If her Allies pointed out that to cripple Germany economically was to make it impossible for Germany to repair the frightful damage she had wrought in France, France would in effect reply that this might be so, but never again could she endure such a menace as had threatened her eastern border for the previous half century. If certain of the Treaty clauses appear to some minds as unduly severe, it must be remembered that the Allies, little more than France, could bear the thought of letting Germany off so easily that within a few years she might again prepare for war. There was fear, too, on the part of those new nations, which had been largely split off from the effete and outworn Austro-Hungarian Empire, that in some way their ancient oppressors would once more gain sway over them. And, every nation, great and small, was overshadowed with the constant terror of Bolshevism,--that dread specter which seemed to be stalking, with long strides, from eastern Europe west towards the Atlantic. Unless peace were hastened that evil might overtake all the Allies. Such apprehensions as these, far more than imperial ambition or greed, were factors in the Treaty decisions. Judgments that might take many months in the ripening could not with safety be awaited. THE PROTECTION DEMANDED BY FRANCE