of Belgium was actually included
In the Peace Treaty, and was accepted by the German representatives
without demur.

[80] To the British observer, one scene, however, stood out
distinguished from the rest--the field of Ypres. In that desolate and
ghostly spot, the natural color and humors of the landscape and the
climate seemed designed to express to the traveler the memories of the
ground. A visitor to the salient early in November, 1918, when a few
German bodies still added a touch of realism and human horror, and the
great struggle was not yet certainly ended, could feel there, as nowhere
else, the present outrage of war, and at the same time the tragic and
sentimental purification which to the future will in some degree
transform its harshness.

[81] These notes, estimated to amount to no less than six
thousand million marks, are now a source of embarrassment and great
potential loss to the Belgian Government, inasmuch as on their recovery
of the country they took them over from their nationals in exchange for
Belgian notes at the rate of Fr. 120 = Mk. 1. This rate of exchange, being
substantially in excess of the value of the mark-notes at the rate of
exchange current at the time (and enormously in excess of the rate to
which the mark notes have since fallen, the Belgian franc being now
worth more than three marks), was the occasion of the smuggling of
mark-notes into Belgium on an enormous scale, to take advantage of the
profit obtainable. The Belgian Government took this very imprudent step,
partly because they hoped to persuade the Peace Conference to make the
redemption of these bank-notes, at the par of exchange, a first charge
on German assets. The Peace Conference held, however, that Reparation
proper must take precedence of the adjustment of improvident banking
transactions effected at an excessive rate of exchange. The possession
by the Belgian Government of this great mass of German currency, in
addition to an amount of nearly two thousand million marks held by the
French Government which they similarly exchanged for the benefit of the
population of the invaded areas and of Alsace-Lorraine, is a serious
aggravation of the exchange position of the mark. It will certainly be
desirable for the Belgian and German Governments to come to some
arrangement as to its disposal, though this is rendered difficult by the
prior lien held by the Reparation Commission over all German assets
available for such purposes.