V

REPARATION

201

Treaty." She undertakes to furnish the Commissionwith all relevant information. And finally inArticle 241, " Germany undertakes to pass, issue,and maintain in force any legislation, orders, anddecrees that may be necessary to give completeeffect to these provisions."

The comments on this of the German FinancialCommission at Versailles were hardly an exaggera-tion :—" German democracy is thus annihilated atthe very moment when the German people was aboutto build it up after a severe struggle—annihilatedby the very persons who throughout the war nevertired of maintaining that they sought to bringdemocracy to us. . . . Germany is no longer apeople and a State, but becomes a mere trade con-cern placed by its creditors in the hands of a receiver,without its being granted so much as the oppor-tunity to prove its willingness to meet its obligationsof its own accord. The Commission, which is to haveits permanent headquarters outside Germany , will pos-sess in Germany incomparably greater rights than theGerman Emperor ever possessed ; the German peopleunder its regime would remain for decades to comeshorn of all rights, and deprived, to a far greater ex-tent than any people in the days of absolutism, of anyindependence of action, of any individual aspirationin its economic or even in its ethical progress."

In their reply to these observations the Alliesrefused to admit that there was any substance,