rbitant levies for war purposes, which have
amounted to billions of francs. This was contrary to all international
law and to the Hague Tribunal's regulations. The funds thus illegally
extorted will have to be repaid in full. No indemnities--that is
understood and is perfectly just. It is precisely because there will
not have to be any indemnities that the indemnities already extorted
will have to be made good.

* * * * *

Finally, just as France cannot make peace without receiving
restitution and reparation, she cannot make peace without receiving
certain guarantees.

Here we approach one of the most complex and difficult aspects of the
entire problem, because we find ourselves in the presence of the
famous League of Nations. President Wilson, one of the most noble and
generous spirits, one of the greatest figures that has appeared in the
entire war, launched if not the idea at least the first definite
statement thereof.... And this statement has awakened in all hearts,
tired of carnage and slaughter, the same infinite hope that words of
goodness, liberty and fraternity always awaken, which evoke the
thought of the supreme end towards which humanity tends. The statement
has done better than merely move men's emotions, it has moved men's
thoughts. It has kindled in them a ray of hope which tends to shine
more brightly every day in that they know that the civilized world
will be truly a civilized world only when it is formed and fashioned
in the likeness of a civilized nation. In a civilized nation no one
has the right to kill another man, to obtain justice by using force,
to commit murder, nor to raise armed bands to shoot, blow up or kill
with poisoned gas other men. Tribunals exist to appease differences
and to prevent fighting; every citizen is associated with every other
citizen in the common cause of security and progress.

In a civilized world no nation has the right to massacre, no nation
ought to have the right to resort to the use of force to obtain
justice, no nation ought to have the right to attack, harm, or
destroy another nation. There ought to be tribunals to appease the
differences of peoples as well as those of individuals; every nation
ought to be associated with every other nation to assure the progress
of the entire world.

This theory is not only appealing, it is irrefutable. But it is a law
for this earth that the most profoundly just and true theories, those
w