The consequence was that the official and semi-official statements of the causes of the war and of the war-aims of the Allies are a most curious hotchpotch. In fact, if any one takes stock in the theory of the one guilty nation and is therefore convinced that the treaty of Versailles is just and proper and likely to enforce an enduring peace, one could suggest nothing better than that he should go through the literature of the war, pick out these statements, put them in parallel columns, and see how they look. If the war originated in the unwarranted conspiracy of a robber nation, if the aims of the Allies were to defeat that conspiracy and render it impotent and to chastise and tie the hands of the robber nation--and that is the theory of the treaty of Versailles--can anyone in his right mind suppose that the Allied politicians and propagandists would ever give out, or need to give out, these ludicrously contradictory and inconsistent explanations and statements? When one has a simple, straight story to tell, and a most effective story, why complicate it and undermine it and throw all sorts of doubts upon it, by venturing upon all sorts of public utterances that will not square with it in any conceivable way? Politicians, of all men, never lie for the fun of it; their available margin of truth is always so narrow that they keep within it when they can. Mr. Lloyd George, for example, is one of the cleverest of politicians. We have already considered his two statements; first, that of 4 August, 1917: What are we fighting for? To defeat the most dangerous conspiracy ever plotted against the liberty of nations; carefully, skilfully, insidiously, clandestinely planned in every detail with ruthless, cynical determination. --and then that of 3 March, 1921: For the Allies, German responsibility for the war is fundamental. It is the basis upon which the structure of the treaty of Versailles has been erected, and if that acknowledgment is repudiated or abandoned, the treaty is destroyed.... German responsibility for the war must be treated by the Allies as a _chose jugée_. A little over two months before Mr. George made this latter utterance, on 23 December, 1920, he said this: The more one reads memoirs and books written in the various countries of what happened before the first of August, 1914, the more one realizes that no one at the head of affairs quite meant war at that stage. It was something into which they glided, or rather staggered and stumbled, perhaps through folly; and a discussion, I have no doubt, would have averted it.