Barnes have issued a joint appeal for the immediate admission of Germany, which has long been the accepted policy of the League of Nations Union. There are many obstacles, but the result will doubtless be known before these words are in print. Fortunately, the admission of new members is decided by a two-thirds majority of the Assembly and does not require a unanimous vote. Once the League is established on a broad base, including the conquered nations on equal terms with the victorious, the prospect of that war of revenge which has hitherto seemed almost inevitable will dwindle and become remote. * * * * * The hope expressed above has not been realized. Austria, Bulgaria, and many less important states applied for admission to the League and were accepted, but French feeling was known to be very strong, and Germany did not even apply. Had she done so she would probably have had a majority in her favour, and it was considered until the beginning of March, 1921, that she was certain of admission at the next meeting of the Assembly in September. But in the meantime untoward events have taken place. The French Government, like the English, obtained success at the elections by wild promises to make Germany pay all the costs of the war. As M. Poincaré has observed, "the French people will not understand how the victors in a great war can be on the verge of bankruptcy." Consequently they think their rulers are cheating them. Educated people, in France as in England, have long since ceased to expect much from German indemnities, but the Governments still depend on their appeal to mob-psychology; and it was believed that if M. Briand ventured to make any concessions in the direction of reason or moderation he would lose his majority in the Chamber. The proposals made at the Inter-Allied Conference at Brussels and drawn up by the French expert, M. Seydoux, had been silently dropped as unsatisfying; the subsequent British proposals made at Boulogne had been rejected for the same reason. It was necessary, however, to make some definite proposals to Germany without much further delay, since the treaty had laid down May 1, 1921, as the time for a settlement. Germany was by that time to have paid a thousand million pounds on account, and was to learn the extent, finite or infinite, of the total bill. Mr. Lloyd George, as might have been expected, showed much sympathy with M. Briand in his awkward position, and agreed to a demand for reparations on a scale which was obviously fantastic. It began, reasonably enough, with a system of annuities, though the first figure was probably too high and the last figures can scarcely have been meant seriously. Germany was to pay £150,000,000 a year for the first five years; then the annual sum was to increase at intervals for the extraordinary period of forty-two years, towards the end of which time Germany was expected to pay annually £300,000,000, or