he admitted was an injustice, in order to assure what seemed to him the larger and the more certain justice that would follow the establishment of the League of Nations.

of

The settlement of the Shantung problem removed the last great difficulty in completing the treaty with Germany, and on the 7th of May the German delegates appeared to receive it. Nearly eight weeks of uncertainty followed, taken up with the study of German protests, the construction of the treaty with Austria, and finally the last crisis that preceded the signature. The terms were drastic and the German Government, in the persons Scheidemann, the Premier, and Brockdorff-Rantzau, Minister for Foreign Affairs, seemed determined that, helpless as she was, Germany should not accept them without radical modifications. Their protests touched chiefly upon the economic clauses and reparations, the solution of the Saar problem, the cession of so much German territory to Poland, and the exclusion of Germany from the League of Nations. Ample opportunity was given their delegates to formulate protests, which, although they rarely introduced new facts or arguments that had not been discussed, were carefully studied by Allied experts. Week after week passed.

In certain quarters among the Allies appeared a tendency to make decided concessions in order to win the consent of the German delegates. No one wanted to carry out an invasion of the defeated country, and there was no guarantee that a military invasion would secure acquiescence. Germany's strength was in sitting still, and she might thus indefinitely postpone the peace. Was it not the wise course, one heard whispered in Paris, to sugar the bitterness of the treaty and thus win Germany's immediate signature?

Early in June, Lloyd George, evidently under pressure from his Cabinet, declared himself for a decided "softening" of the peace terms in order to secure the acceptance of the enemy. What would Wilson do? He had been anathematized at home and abroad as pro-German and desirous of saving Germany from the consequences of her misdeeds; here was his chance. Would he join with the British in tearing up this treaty, which after four months of concentrated effort had just been completed, in order to secure the soft peace that he was supposed to advocate? His attitude in this contingency showed his ability to preserve an even balance. In the meeting of the American delegation that was called to consider the British proposal,

he pronounced himself as strongly in favor of any changes that would ensure more complete justice. If the British and French would consent to a definite and moderate sum of reparations (a consent which he knew was out of the question) he would gladly agree. But he would not agree to any concessions to Germany that were not based upon justice, but merely upon the desire to secure her signature. He was not in favor of any softening which would mar the justice of the settlement as drafted. "We did not come over," he said, "simply to get any sort of peace treaty signed. We came over to do justice. I believe, even, that a hard peace is a good thing for Germany herself, in order that she may know what an unjust war means. We must not forget what our soldiers fought for, even if it means that we may have to fight again." Wilson's stand for the treaty as drafted proved decisive. Certain modifications in details were made, but the hasty and unwise enthusiasm of Lloyd George for scrapping entire sections was not approved. The Conference could hardly have survived wholesale concessions to Germany: to prolong the crisis would have been a disastrous confession of incompetence. For what confidence could have been placed in statesmen

who were so patently unable to make and keep their minds?

Still the German Government held firm and refused to sign. Foch inspected the Allied troops on the Rhine and Pershing renounced his trip to England, in order to be ready for the invasion that had been ordered if the time limit elapsed without signature. Only at the last moment did the courage of the Germans fail. A change of ministry brought into power men who were willing to accept the inevitable humiliation. On the 20th of June, the guns and sirens of Paris announced Germany's acceptance of the peace terms and their promise to sign, and, surprising fact, a vast crowd gathered on the Place de la Concorde to cheer Wilson; despite his loss of popularity and the antagonism which he had aroused by his opposition to national aspirations of one sort or another, he was still the man whose name stood as symbol for peace.

Eight days later in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, where forty-eight years before had been born the German Empire, the delegates of the Allied states gathered to celebrate the obsequies of that Empire. It was no peace of reconciliation, this treaty between the new German Republic and the victorious Allies. The hatred and distrust

inspired by five years of war were not so soon to be liquidated. As the German delegates, awkward and rather defiant in their long black frock coats, marched to the table to affix their signatures, they were obviously, in the eyes of the Allied delegates and the hundreds of spectators, always "the enemy." The place of the Chinese at the treaty table was empty; for them it was no peace of justice that gave Shantung to the Japanese, and they would not sign. The South African delegate, General Smuts, could not sign without explaining the balance of considerations which led him to sanction an international document containing so many flaws.

It was not, indeed, the complete peace of justice which Wilson had promised and which, at times, he has since implied he believed it to be. Belgians complained that they had not been given the left bank of the Scheldt; Frenchmen were incensed because their frontier had not been protected; Italians were embittered by the refusal to approve their claims on the Adriatic; radical leaders, the world over, were frank in their expression of disappointment at the failure to inaugurate a new social order. The acquiescence in Japanese demands for Kiau-Chau was clearly dictated by expediency rather than by justice. Austria, reduced in size