The political inheritors of those who made the peace are now extremely uneasy about it. Their predecessors (including Mr. Lloyd George, who still remains in office) had flogged up popular hatred against the Central Empires at such a rate that when they took office they still had, or thought they had, to court and indulge this hatred. Thus we found Mr. Secretary Hughes, for example, in his first communication to the German Government, laying it down that the basis of the Versailles treaty was sound--that Germany was solely responsible for the war. He spoke of it quite in the vein of Mr. Lloyd George, as a _chose jugée_. After having promulgated the treaty with such immense ceremony, and raised such preposterous and extravagant popular expectations on the strength of it, the architects of the treaty bequeathed an exceedingly difficult task to their successors; the task of letting the public down, diverting their attention with this or that gesture, taking their mind off their disappointments and scaling down their expectations, so that in time it might be safe to let the Versailles treaty begin to sink out of sight. The task is being undertaken; the curious piece of mountebankery recently staged in Washington, for example, was an ambitious effort to keep the peoples, particularly those of Europe, hopeful, confiding and diverted; and if economic conditions permit, if times do not become too hard, it may succeed. The politicians can not say outright that the theory of the Versailles treaty is dishonest and outrageous, and that the only chance of peace and well-being is by tearing up the treaty and starting anew on another basis entirely. They can not say this on account of the exigencies of their detestable trade. The best that they can do is what they are doing. They must wait until the state of public feeling permits them to ease down from their uncompromising stand upon the treaty. Gradually, they expect, the public will accustom itself to the idea of relaxations and accommodations, as it sees, from day to day, the patent impracticability of any other course; feelings will weaken, asperities soften, hatreds die out, contacts and approaches of one kind or another will take place; and finally, these public men or their political inheritors will think themselves able to effect in an unobtrusive way, such substantial modifications of the treaty of Versailles as will amount to its annulment.