those whose emotions its horrors had
disordered, were both provided for. A vote for a Coalition candidate
meant the Crucifixion of Anti-Christ and the assumption by Germany of
the British National Debt.

It proved an irresistible combination, and once more Mr. George's
political instinct was not at fault. No candidate could safely denounce
this program, and none did so. The old Liberal Party, having nothing
comparable to offer to the electorate, was swept out of existence.[101]
A new House of Commons came into being, a majority of whose members had
pledged themselves to a great deal more than the Prime Minister's
guarded promises. Shortly after their arrival at Westminster I asked a
Conservative friend, who had known previous Houses, what he thought of
them. "They are a lot of hard-faced men," he said, "who look as if they
had done very well out of the war."

This was the atmosphere in which the Prime Minister left for Paris, and
these the entanglements he had made for himself. He had pledged himself
and his Government to make demands of a helpless enemy inconsistent with
solemn engagements on our part, on the faith of which this enemy had
laid down his arms. There are few episodes in history which posterity
will have less reason to condone,--a war ostensibly waged in defense of
the sanctity of international engagements ending in a definite breach of
one of the most sacred possible of such engagements on the part of
victorious champions of these ideals.[102]

Apart from other aspects of the transaction, I believe that the
campaign for securing out of Germany the general costs of the war was
one of the most serious acts of political unwisdom for which our
statesmen have ever been responsible. To what a different future Europe
might have looked forward if either Mr. Lloyd George or Mr. Wilson had
apprehended that the most serious of the problems which claimed their
attention were not political or territorial but financial and economic,
and that the perils of the future lay not in frontiers or sovereignties
but in food, coal, and transport. Neither of them paid adequate
attention to these problems at any stage of the Conference. But in any
event the atmosphere for the wise and reasonable consideration of them
was hopelessly befogged by the commitments of the British delegation on
the question of Indemnities. The hopes to which the Prime Minister had
given rise not only compelled him to advocate an unjust and unworkable