Even to-day the position of many English women in Germany who are married to Germans is most pitiful. Under the Peace Treaty the Allies reserved the power to retain and liquidate all property belonging to German nationals. I am not concerned at this point to raise the question as to how far this precedent of confiscation may prove a double-edged weapon in the capitalist world. But again, it is not the rich man who suffers. Large fortunes can always take care of themselves. The people who have been ground to powder by this provision are women with tiny incomes or annuities, the complete stopping of which has meant literal starvation. Most painful cases of this character came to my notice in the Rhineland. In some instances women are told that if they leave their husbands and return to England the money will be paid. Is a war fought for “truth and justice” to eventuate in alternatives of such a character? Are women, at the end of an agonising experience, to choose between husbands they may love and the stark fact of starvation? I heard of one English woman, too proud to beg or receive alms, who came by stealth and searched the swill-tubs of a mess in order to pick out food from it. The British military authorities have shown invariable sympathy and kindness to these unfortunates. They have done what lay in their power to mitigate the circumstances. Soldiers do not fail in compassion to the poor and needy. The little group of politicians conspicuous for their Hun-hunting activities have not served with the colours. The British Army fights its enemies in the field. It does not persecute women and decrepit old men. But the soldiers cannot alter the confiscation clauses of the Treaty which press with such peculiar hardship on people of small incomes. If these clauses are directed to searching the pockets of the Stinnes and the Krupps, let exceptions at least be made on the lower levels. The Treaty of Versailles in many of its provisions merely reflects the current hatreds of the hour. Modification of these clauses is inevitable when the wave of passion has subsided.