Hence was started the policy of deliberately ruining Germany, after her surrender, by a long blockade in time of what, to the ordinary man, appeared to be peace, and immediately after a promise of "the removal of economic barriers and the establishment of equality of trade conditions." This was not a technical breach of faith; technically we were still at war with Germany, and we had never promised not to starve our enemies after their surrender. The promise of equality of trade conditions only applied to conditions after the peace. Nevertheless, a historian will probably regard the establishment and continuance of this blockade of the enemy lands after their surrender as one of those many acts of almost incredible inhumanity which have made the recent Great War conspicuous in the annals of mankind and shaken thoughtful men's faith in the reality of modern civilization. Certain articles in the _Matin_ discussing the exact dose of famine desirable in order to create the maximum of individual suffering and public weakness in the Boche are difficult to parallel in the literature of morbid hate, except among some of the German war pamphlets. Thus the Fourteen Points, besides a regrettable indefiniteness of phrasing, had the fatal fault of being utterly out of touch with the feeling of most of the belligerents. As the time wore on this feeling asserted its influence on the terms of the treaty. The Boche had deliberately and treacherously plunged Europe into war; he had waged the war with revolting cruelty; he had inflicted unheard-of suffering on the innocent, and, by a miracle, he had been beaten. Now let him pay the penalty! President Wilson had pledged the Allies "to be just to the German people as to all others. . . . To propose anything but justice to Germany at any time would be to renounce our own cause." "Very good," answered the dominant voices of 1918; "the criminal asks for justice, and so far as our power reaches, justice he shall have!" The total of wrongs done by Germany, in plotting the war, in waging it, and in the destruction of life and property, could easily be regarded as an almost infinite sum, and "Justice" surely demanded for that an almost infinite punishment.