It is more fashionable to lay the blame on a group of elderly statesmen who met in Paris to arrange the pacification. They were the leaders who had piloted their nations to triumph—men of unstained integrity who, having survived incredible anxieties, had the right to be more war-jaded than any of their countrymen. They met at a time when the nerves of both conquerors and defeated had reached the breaking-point. They had no sooner assembled than the clamour arose, “Make haste. Make haste.” Overnight they were compelled to attempt solutions for race-problems which had eluded astuter minds than theirs for centuries. They were forced to decide the fates of nations whose language they could not speak, whose lands they had not visited, whose geography was unfamiliar to them and whose very histories they were not given time to study. They were not permitted to consecrate to peace a hundredth part of the industry that victory had required. As a consequence, in order to abbreviate debates, they cleared the room of critics and carved up the map of Europe behind closed doors. They were good men, animated by a desire to help humanity. Civilisation was crumbling while they delayed. The loud boom of threatened ruin thundered through their council-chamber like the cracking of Arctic ice. It was not their reparation clauses that did the damage. The reparation clauses were just. The least you can ask of a boy who flings a stone is that he shall replace the pane which he smashed. The damage was done by clauses conceived in the finest spirit of altruism, but with no practical knowledge of what was possible. You may pitch your ideals so high that you render them useless. The weakness of the Peace Treaty lay in the fact that its framers had to rely on books and hearsay for information which, to be accurate, ought to have been obtained by first-hand investigation. And they were not business men. They were journalists, professors and oratorical inspirers; whereas their task from first to last was a reorganizing of the world's big business. When the doors were flung wide on their deliberations, they presented humanity with exactly what we might have expected—a paper peace. It was a noble performance for the time it had taken. It read beautifully, but in practice large portions of it have proved wholly unworkable and have produced an economic stagnation which is neither peace nor war. It is fair to state, however, that whether because of or in spite of it, Europe has shown a marked improvement in the last two years.