exaggerated appearances, and I believe that if we can once get out of them into the calmer airs it would be easier to come to satisfactory solutions.

MR. DAVIS: You assume, Mr. President, that the other chiefs of state are instructing their other technical delegations to get together with us in the same way? THE PRESIDENT: I am assuming it without any right; I am taking it for granted.

COLONEL HOUSE: I don't think it will make any difference. You are doing it anyway.

THE PRESIDENT: Now I hope anybody else who has been convinced by the German arguments will speak up. MR. HOOVER: Apart from all questions of justice, how far does the question of expediency come in?

THE PRESIDENT: In order to get them to sign, do you mean?

MR. HOOVER: In order to get them to sign. It strikes me that that is a more important thing than the question of justice or injustice, because the weighing of justice and injustice in these times is pretty difficult.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, nobody can be sure that they have made a just decision. But don't you think that if we regard the treaty as just, the argument of expediency ought not to govern, because after all we must not give up what we fought for. We might have to fight for it again.

MR. HOOVER: But we look at expediency in many lights. It may be necessary to change the terms of the reparation in view of getting something, rather than to lose all. And it is not a question of justice; justice would require, as I see it, that they pay everything they have got or hope to get. But in order to obtain something it may be expedient to do this, that. and the other. Much the same might apply to the Saar and the Silesian coal basins.

THE PRESIDENT: I admit the argument that it might be expedient to do certain things in order to get what you are after. But what you mean is the question of expediency in order to obtain the signature?

MR. HOOVER: I would go even further than the point I

mention, that if it was necessary to alter the Saar and the Silesian terms, that such alteration would not contravene the principles of justice.

THE PRESIDENT: I do not see any essential injustice in the Saar Basin terms.

DR. HASKINS: I believe that everyone feels that the League of Nations has something very real and very important to do. The Saar Basin is something for the League of Nations to do.

THE PRESIDENT: We have removed the only serious element of injustice in that arrangement as it stood. Germany had to pay a certain sum in gold at the end of the period for the mines, or else the plebiscite was of no practical result. France obtained sovereignty over the region. We have altered that.

MR. WHITE: There is still the question of the vote.

DR. HASKINS: There are two or three minor modifications in the clauses that are necessary in the matter of clarity, Mr. White has raised one of them—where the language did not seem perfectly clear.

THE PRESIDENT: In order to obtain what we intended? DR. HASKINS: Yes.

MR. DAVIS: It is necessary to get peace as soon as possible. If Europe does not get together, the situation is going to be awful. Our appropriations have run out, practically; in about another month we won't have any money at all.

THE PRESIDENT: We won't have any appropriated money, you mean?

MR. DAVIS: We won't have any money appropriated for that purpose. When real war is not being conducted it is much more difficult to get money. The way people now feel about bonds, it would be difficult to get money. And the sooner they can get something and issue some obligations which these countries can use as a basis of credit, the better off we will be.

MR. WHITE: If we make certain modifications in the financial and economic clauses, would that not be enough, don't you think?

MR. DAVIS: We feel it would, if we can get together on

that. Now whether these other questions are such that Germany will not agree to sign, we don't know. But I mean their reply makes us feel rather hopeful that we can certainly get together on reparations.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I don't want to seem to be unreasonable, but my feeling is this: that we ought not, with the object of getting it signed, make changes in the treaty, if we think that it embodies what we were contending for; that the time to consider all these questions was when we were writing the treaty, and it makes me a little tired for people to come and say now that they are afraid the Germans won't sign, and their fear is based upon things that they insisted upon at the time of the writing of the treaty; that makes me very sick.

And that is the thing that happened. These people that over-rode our judgment and wrote things into the treaty that are now the stumbling blocks, are falling over themselves to remove these stumbling blocks. Now, if they ought not to have been there I say, remove them, but I say do not remove them merely for the fact of having the treaty signed.

Here is

MR. WHITE: Do the French remind you of that? THE PRESIDENT: Not so much as the British. a British group made up of every kind of British opinion, from Winston Churchill to Fisher. From the unreasonable to the reasonable, all the way around, they are all unanimous, if you please, in their funk. Now that makes me very tired. They ought to have been rational to begin with and then they would not have needed to have funked at the end. They ought to have done the rational things, I admit, and it is not very gracious for me to remind them -though I have done so with as much grace as I could command.

MR. DAVIS: They say that they do not quite understand why you permitted them to do that.

COLONEL HOUSE: So they say you are responsible for their doing it.

THE PRESIDENT: I would be perfectly willing to take the responsibility if the result is good. But though we did not keep them from putting irrational things in the

treaty, we got very serious modifications out of them. If we had written the treaty the way they wanted it the Germans would have gone home the minute they read it. Well, the Lord be with us.

Thereupon, at 1.15 P. M., the meeting adjourned.

DOCUMENT 69.

Letter of General Tasker H. Bliss to President Wilson, June 6, 1919, making "A Brief Analysis of the German Proposals on the Military Terms of the Draft Treaty" (autographed original).

AMERICAN COMMISSION TO NEGOTIATE PEACE.

DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:

Hotel de Crillon, Paris,

June 6th, 1919.

The following is a brief analysis of the German CounterProposals on the military terms of the draft Treaty.

1. Germany accepts the fundamental principles of the military, naval and air terms, subject to the condition that, on the conclusion of Peace, she be admitted with equal rights into the League of Nations.

2. If admitted to the League, she voluntarily waives her equality of rights in the following regards; she agrees to disarm at once and to abolish universal military service provided the other States of the League undertake, within two years from the conclusion of Peace, to also disarm and abolish universal military service.

3. In agreeing to reduce her armed forces to the number required by the Treaty, she asks that a transition period be granted to her, to be arranged by a Special Convention and, if necessary, confirmed by the League of Nations, during which period she may maintain such armed forces as may be shown to be necessary and are agreed upon in order to preserve internal order "which," she says, 'is at present seriously shaken.

66

4. In the League, she demands the right conceded to every other member to organize and arm such forces as the League permits her to have according to her judg

ment.