It seemed to be the old men who resented most the loss of territory, as the women were most savage in their expressions. Probably grandfather would miss the far corner lot more than would the younger members of the family, who had not been accustomed to seeing it so long. When one could get the Germans to specify, they rated the proposed terms about as follows: “The loss of the Saar is the worst; the losses in the east, second; the loss of our colonies, third.” But they reminded one of a man who has just returned home and found his house wrecked—the farther he looks the more damage he discovers; at each new discovery he gasps a bit more chokingly, and finally stands dumb before the immensity of the catastrophe that has befallen him, for some time undecided just what his next move shall be. “We would rather pay any amount of indemnity than lose territory,” they went on, at last. “It is a crime to occupy the Rhineland, the richest, most taxable, the most freedom-loving part of Germany. And now they are trying to steal that from us in addition! The Allies are trying to Balkanize us. They do not want money from us; they want to _vernichten_ us, to destroy us completely. The immense majority of the people of the Rhineland do not want to abandon us; they are loyal to the Empire. But the French have the upper hand now; they protect the few self-seekers who are riding it over the loyal masses; the British are willing and the Americans are simple enough to believe that the republic that is to have its capital in Coblenz represents the desires of the majority. Never! The Catholics and the capitalists combined to form the Rhine Republic, with the aid of the French—because they could thus both have more power for themselves.” (How true this statement may be I can only judge from the fact that a very small minority of those I questioned on the subject while with the Army of Occupation expressed any desire to see the region separated from Germany, and that I found virtually _no_ sentiment for abandoning the Empire in any portion whatever of unoccupied Germany.) “Then these new frontiers in the east were set by men who know the conditions there only from books, not from being on the spot, or at best by men who were misinformed by the stupid or biased agents they sent. Thus many towns almost wholly inhabited by Germans are now to be given to the Poles, and _vice versa_.” As to the proposed punishment of the Kaiser, though there seemed to be very little love and no great loyalty—except in acquitting him on the score of beginning the war—left for him among the great mass of the people, this clause aroused as great wrath as any. The German saw in it a matter of national honor.