In making their reply the Allies seemed momentarily to have overlooked one fact--their own handiwork in the Treaty. Before the War it would have been a true reply. But the Allies have transformed what were, before the War, dangerous fallacies into monstrous truths. President Wilson has described the position of Germany under the Treaty in these terms:-- 'The Treaty of Peace sets up a great Commission, known as the Reparations Commission.... That Reparation Commission can determine the currents of trade, the conditions of credit, of international credit; it can determine how much Germany is going to buy, where it is going to buy, and how it is going to pay for it.'[22] In other words, it is no longer open to Germany, as the result of guarantees of free movement accorded to individual traders, to carry on that process by which before the War she supported herself. Individual Germans cannot now, as heretofore, get raw materials by dealing with foreign individuals, without reference to their nationality. Germans are now, in fact, placed in the position of having to deal through their State, which in turn deals with other States. To buy wheat or iron, they cannot as heretofore go to individuals, to the grower or mine-owner, and offer a price; the thing has to be done through Governments. We have come much nearer to a condition in which the States do indeed 'own' (they certainly control) their raw material. The most striking instance is that of access to the Lorraine iron, which before the War furnished three-fourths of the raw material of Germany's basic industry. Under the individualist system, in which 'the buyer is king' in which efforts were mainly directed to finding markets, no obstacle was placed on the export of iron (except, indeed, the obstacle to the acquisition by French citizens of Lorraine iron set up by the French Government in the imposition of tariffs). But under the new order, with the French State assuming such enormously increased economic functions, the destination of the iron will be determined by political considerations. And 'political considerations,' in an order of international society in which the security of the nation depends, not upon the collective strength of the whole society, but upon its relative strength as against rival units, mean the deliberate weakening of rivals. Thus, no longer will the desire of private owners to find a market for their wares be a guarantee of the free access of citizens in other States to those materials. In place of a play of factors which did, however clumsily, ensure in practice general access to raw materials, we have a new order of motives; the deliberate desire of States, competing in power, owning great sources of raw material, to deprive rival States of the use of them.