Taking into consideration Germany's financial downfall, which threatens to upset not only all the indemnity schemes but the entire economy of continental Europe, the state of mind which is prevalent is not much different from that which Tardieu indicates. It is already more than a year ago since I left the direction of the Italian Government, and the French Press no longer accused me of being in perfect agreement with Lloyd George, yet Poincaré wrote on August 1, 1920: _L'autre jour M. Asquith déclarait au parlement britannique: "Quelque forme de langage qu'on emploie, la conférence de Spa a bien été, en fait, une conférence pour la révision des conditions du traité." "Chut!" a répondu M. Lloyd George: "c'est là une déclaration très grave par l'effet qu'elle peut produire en France. Je ne puis la laisser passer sans la contredire." Contradiction de pure forme, faite pour courtoisie vis-à-vis de nous, mais qui malheureusement ne change rien au fond des choses. Chaque fois que le Conseil Suprême s'est réuni, il a laissé sur la table des delibérations quelques morceaux épars du traité_. No kind of high-handedness, no combined effort, will ever be able to keep afloat absurdities like the dream of the vast indemnity, the Polish programme, the hope of annexing the Saar, etc. As things go there is almost more danger for the victors than for the vanquished. He who has lost all has nothing to lose. It is rather the victorious nations who risk all in this disorganized Europe of ours. The conquerors arm themselves in the ratio by which the vanquished disarm, and the worse the situation of our old enemies becomes, so much the worse become the exchanges and the credits of the victorious continental countries. Yet, in some of the exaggerated ideas of France and other countries of the Entente, there is not only the rancour and anxiety for the future, but a sentiment of well-founded diffidence. After the War the European States belonging to the Entente have been embarrassed not only on account of the enormous internal debts, but also for the huge debts contracted abroad. If Germany had not had to pay any indemnity and had not lost her colonies and mercantile marine we should have been confronted with the absurd paradox that the victorious nations would have issued from the War worn out, with their territories destroyed, and with a huge foreign debt; Germany would have had her territory quite intact, her industries ready to begin work again, herself anxious to start again her productive force, and in addition with no foreign debt, consequently ample credit abroad. In the mad struggle to break up Germany there has had part not only hatred, but also a quite reasonable anxiety which, after all, must be taken into consideration.