CHAPTER IV

THE TREATY

The thoughts which I have expressed in the secondchapter were not present to the mind of Paris . Thefuture life of Europe was not their concern; itsmeans of livelihood was not their anxiety. Theirpreoccupations, good and bad alike, related to frontiersand nationalities, to the balance of power, to imperialaggrandisements, to the future enfeeblement of astrong and dangerous enemy, to revenge, and to theshifting by the victors of their unbearable financialburdens on to the shoulders of the defeated.

Two rival schemes for the future polity of theworld took the field,—the Fourteen Points of thePresident, and the Carthaginian Peace of M. Clemen-ceau. Yet only one of these was entitled to take thefield; for the enemy had not surrendered uncondi-tionally, but on agreed terms as to the generalcharacter of the Peace.

This aspect of what happened cannot, unfortun-ately, be passed over with a word, for in the mindsof many Englishmen at least it has been a subject