It is always difficult in the affairs of a democratic country to determine the exact point where mere inconsistency and laxity of thought, or even mere lack of coördination between the various organs of government, merge into something like deliberate perfidy. It may so easily happen that one set of individuals give the promise and quite another set act in breach of it. But an Englishman who wishes seriously to understand the present international situation must begin by realizing clearly that the treaty imposed on the Germans at Versailles, after they had surrendered their arms, appears to them and to a large number of neutral observers as a monstrous breach of faith. It contravened in spirit and in detail much of what they understood by the Fourteen Points. I confess that, after reading carefully the German Protest and the Allied Reply, it seems to me that the German reading of President Wilson's terms was in some points the natural one; and, apart from the treaty itself, that the action taken against the Germans when they were disarmed was not consistent with the language and the pledges addressed to them while they were still in the field. As a matter of fact, certain of those responsible, or partly responsible, for the negotiations on the Entente side, when they saw the way things were going, recalled bitterly the great historic perfidy by which Rome trapped Carthage to her doom. A charge of this kind is, of course, very serious; and the results of the action taken at Versailles have been more than serious. I will ask my readers patiently to consider in broad outlines the causes, psychological and other, which seem to have been at work; for of course it is quite possible and even probable that, of the main actors concerned, not one had any intention of trying to trap the Germans by perjury. Some of them doubtless were unscrupulous men, such as wars habitually throw to the surface; but they were not men of the Machiavellian type. Two broad facts stand out clearly to one who studies the documents. First, the Governments which accepted President Wilson's Fourteen Points as the basis of peace with Germany were from the start quite out of sympathy with his spirit. Why, then, did they accept them? Because they had really no choice. To refuse would not have been only to reject a long delayed and desperately needed peace. It would have been to confess to the world that, contrary to so many previous professions, their aims were frankly what is now termed "imperialistic." Above all, it would have been to alienate Mr. Wilson, without whom victory was impossible. They were bound to accept.