ropagate so easily,
as has been seen, as amid national disillusionment.

V

The French Government desires to limit itself for the moment to these
observations of a general character. It pays full homage to the
intentions which inspired Mr. Lloyd George's memorandum. But it
considers that the inductions that can be drawn from the present Note
are in consonance with justice and the general interests.

And those are the considerations by which the French Government will
be inspired in the coming exchange of ideas for the discussion of
conditions suggested by the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

These two documents are of more than usual interest.

The British Prime Minister, with his remarkable insight, at once notes
the seriousness of the situation. He sees the danger to the peace
of the world in German depression. Germany oppressed does not mean
Germany subjected. Every year France becomes numerically weaker,
Germany stronger. The horrors of war will be forgotten and the
maintenance of peace will depend on the creation of a situation which
makes life possible, does not cause exasperation to come into public
feeling or into the just claims of Germans desirous of independence.
Injustice in the hour of triumph will never be pardoned, can never be
atoned.

So the idea of handing over to other States numbers of Germans is not
only an injustice, but a cause of future wars, and what can be said
of Germans is also true of Magyars. No cause of future wars must be
allowed to remain. Putting millions of Germans under Polish rule--that
is, under an inferior people which has never shown any capacity for
stable self-government--must lead to a new war sooner or later. If
Germany in exasperation became a country of revolution, what would
happen to Europe? You can impose severe conditions, but that does not
mean that you can enforce them; the conditions to be imposed must be
such that a responsible German Government can in good faith assume the
obligation of carrying them out.

Neither Great Britain nor the United States of America can assume
the obligation of occupying Germany if it does not carry out the
excessively severe conditions which it is desired to impose. Can
France occupy Germany alone?

From that moment Lloyd George saw the necessity of admitting Germany
into the League of Nations _at once_, and proposed a scheme of treaty
containing conditions which, while very severe, were in part tolerable
for the German peopl