not for the benefit of their children,
their old age, their pride, or their position, but for the enjoyment of
a foreign conqueror.

[134] In the course of the compromises and delays of the
Conference, there were many questions on which, in order to reach any
conclusion at all, it was necessary to leave a margin of vagueness and
uncertainty. The whole method of the Conference tended towards
this,--the Council of Four wanted, not so much a settlement, as a
treaty. On political and territorial questions the tendency was to leave
the final arbitrament to the League of Nations. But on financial and
economic questions, the final decision has generally be a left with the
Reparation Commission,--in spite of its being an executive body composed
of interested parties.

[135] The sum to be paid by Austria for Reparation is left to
the absolute discretion of the Reparation Commission, no determinate
figure of any kind being mentioned in the text of the Treaty Austrian
questions are to be handled by a special section of the Reparation
Commission, but the section will have no powers except such as the main
Commission may delegate.

[136] Bulgaria is to pay an indemnity of $450,000,000 by
half-yearly instalments, beginning July 1, 1920. These sums will be
collected, on behalf of the Reparation Commission, by an Inter-Ally
Commission of Control, with its seat at Sofia. In some respects the
Bulgarian Inter-Ally Commission appears to have powers and authority
independent of the Reparation Commission, but it is to act,
nevertheless, as the agent of the latter, and is authorized to tender
advice to the Reparation Commission as to, for example, the reduction of
the half-yearly instalments.

[137] Under the Treaty this is the function of any body
appointed for the purpose by the principal Allied and Associated
Governments, and not necessarily of the Reparation Commission. But it
may be presumed that no second body will be established for this special
purpose.

[138] At the date of writing no treaties with these countries
have been drafted. It is possible that Turkey might be dealt with by a
separate Commission.

[139] This appears to me to be in effect the position (if this
paragraph means anything at all), in spite of the following disclaimer
of such intentions in the Allies' reply:--"Nor does Paragraph 12(b) of
Annex II. give the Commission powers to prescribe or enforce taxes or to
dictate the character of the German budget."