For the purposes of simplicity and brevity the main argument of _The Great Illusion_ assumed the relative permanence of the institution of private property in Western society, and the persistence of the tendency of victorious belligerents to respect it, a tendency which had steadily grown in strength for five hundred years. The book assumed that the conqueror would do in the future what he has done to a steadily increasing degree in the past, especially as the reasons for such policy, in terms of self-interest, have so greatly grown in force during the last generation or two. To have argued its case in terms of non-existent and hypothetical conditions which might not exist for generations or centuries, would have involved hopelessly bewildering complications. And the decisive reason for not adding this complication was the fact that _though it would vary the form of the argument, it would not effect the final conclusion_. As already explained in the first part of this book (Chapter II) this war has marked a revolution in the position of private property and the relation of the citizen to the State. The Treaty of Versailles departs radically from the general principles adhered to, for instance, in the Treaty of Frankfurt; the position of German traders and that of the property of German citizens does not at all to-day resemble the position in which the Treaty of Frankfurt left the French trader and French private property. The fact of the difference has already been entered into at some length. It remains to see how the change affects the general argument adopted in _The Great Illusion_. It does not affect its final conclusions. The argument ran: A conqueror cannot profit by 'loot' in the shape of confiscations, tributes, indemnities, which paralyse the economic life of the defeated enemy. They are economically futile. They are unlikely to be attempted, but if they are attempted they will still be futile.[119]