overwhelming financial difficulties. If it amused the financiers to put into the Treaty some very large demands, well there was no harm in that; but the satisfaction of these demands must not be allowed to interfere with the essential requirements of a Carthaginian Peace. The combination of the "real" policy of M. Clemenceau on unreal issues, with M. Klotz's policy of pretense on what were very real issues indeed, introduced into the Treaty a whole set of incompatible provisions, over and above the inherent impracticabilities of the Reparation proposals.
I cannot here describe the endless controversy and intrigue between the Allies themselves, which at last after some months culminated in the presentation to Germany of the Reparation Chapter in its final form. There can have been few negotiations in history so contorted, so miserable, so utterly unsatisfactory to all parties. I doubt if any one who took much part in that debate can look back on it without shame. I must be content with an analysis of the elements of the final compromise which is known to all the world.
The main point to be settled was, of course, that of the items for which Germany could fairly be asked to make payment. Mr. Lloyd George's election pledge to the effect that the Allies were entitled to demand from Germany the entire costs of the war was from the outset clearly untenable; or rather, to put it more impartially, it was clear that to persuade the President of the conformity of this demand with our pro-Armistice engagements was beyond the powers of the most plausible. The actual compromise finally reached is to be read as follows in the paragraphs of the Treaty as it has been published to the world.
Article 231 reads: "The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which