d importance
of much of its contents, a truly broad treatment and high dignify of
outlook were a little wanting, and the general effect lacks the simple
treatment, with the dispassionate objectivity of despair which the deep
passions of the occasion might have evoked. The Allied governments gave
it, in any case, no serious consideration, and I doubt if anything which
the German delegation could have said at that stage of the proceedings
would have much influenced the result.

The commonest virtues of the individual are often lacking in the
spokesmen of nations; a statesman representing not himself but his
country may prove, without incurring excessive blame--as history often
records--vindictive, perfidious, and egotistic. These qualities are
familiar in treaties imposed by victors. But the German delegation did
not succeed in exposing in burning and prophetic words the quality which
chiefly distinguishes this transaction from all its historical
predecessors--its insincerity.

This theme, however, must be for another pen than mine. I am mainly
concerned in what follows, not with the justice of the Treaty,--neither
with the demand for penal justice against the enemy, nor with the
obligation of contractual justice on the victor,--but with its wisdom
and with its consequences.

I propose, therefore, in this chapter to set forth baldly the principal
economic provisions of the Treaty, reserving, however, for the next my
comments on the Reparation Chapter and on Germany's capacity to meet the
payments there demanded from her.

The German economic system as it existed before the war depended on
three main factors: I. Overseas commerce as represented by her
mercantile marine, her colonies, her foreign investments, her exports,
and the overseas connections of her merchants; II. The exploitation of
her coal and iron and the industries built upon them; III. Her transport
and tariff system. Of these the first, while not the least important,
was certainly the most vulnerable. The Treaty aims at the systematic
destruction of all three, but principally of the first two.

I

(1) Germany has ceded to the Allies _all_ the vessels of her mercantile
marine exceeding 1600 tons gross, half the vessels between 1000 tons and
1600 tons, and one quarter of her trawlers and other fishing boats.[9]
The cession is comprehensive, including not only vessels flying the
German flag, but also all vessels owned by Germans but flying other
flags,