a guide, but it is on facts that I have solidly based my considerations.

J. Keynes and Robert Lansing have already published some very important things, but no secret documents; recently, however, Tardieu and Poincaré, in the interest of the French nationalist thesis which they sustain, have published also documents of a very reserved nature. Tardieu's book is a documentary proof of the French Government's extremist attitude during the conference, amply showing that the present form of peace has been desired almost exclusively by France, and that the others have been unwilling parties to it. Besides his articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes, Poincaré has recently published in the Temps (September 12, 1921) a whole secret correspondence between Poincaré, President of the Republic, Clemenceau, President of the Council of Ministers, the American Delegation, and, above all, Lloyd George.

CONTENTS

1. EUROPE WITHOUT PEACE

2. THE PEACE TREATIES AND THE CONTINUATION OF THE WAR

3. THE PEACE TREATIES: THEIR ORIGIN AND AIMS

4. THE CONQUERORS AND THE CONQUERED

5. THE INDEMNITY FROM THE DEFEATED ENEMY AND THE ANXIETIES OF THE VICTORS

6. EUROPE'S POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION AND PEACE POLICY

INDEX

The author includes in the book numerous secret official documents that emanated from the Peace Conference and which came into his hands in his position, at that time, as Italian Prime Minister. Among these is a long and hitherto unpublished secret letter sent by Lloyd George to Nitti, Wilson, Clemenceau, and the other members of the Peace Conference.

I

EUROPE WITHOUT PEACE

Is there anyone who still remembers Europe in the first months of 1914 or calls to mind the period which preceded the first year of the War? It all seems terribly remote, something like a prehistoric era, not only because the conditions of life have changed, but because our viewpoint on life has swerved to a different angle.

Something like thirty million dead have dug a chasm between two ages. War killed many millions, disease accounted for many more, but the hardiest reaper has been famine. The dead have built up a great cold barrier between the Europe of yesterday and the Europe of to-day.

We have lived through two historic epochs, not through two different periods. Europe was happy and prosperous, while now, after the terrible World War, she is threatened with a decline and a reversion to brutality which suggest the fall of the Roman Empire. We ourselves do not quite understand what is happening around us. More than two-thirds of Europe is in a state of ferment, and everywhere there prevails a vague sense of uneasiness, ill-calculated to encourage important collective works. We live, as the saying is, "from hand to mouth."

Before 1914 Europe had enjoyed a prolonged period of peace, attaining a degree of wealth and civilization unrivalled in the past.

In Central Europe Germany had sprung up. After the Napoleonic invasions, in the course of a century, Germany, which a hundred years ago seemed of all European countries the least disposed to militarism, had developed into a great military monarchy. From being the most particularist country Germany had in reality become the most unified state. But what constituted her strength was not so much her army and navy as the prestige of her intellectual development. She had achieved it laboriously, almost painfully, on a soil which was not fertile and within a limited territory, but, thanks to the tenacity of her effort, she succeeded in winning a prominent place in the world-race for supremacy. Her universities, her institutes for technical instruction, her schools, were a model to the whole world. In the course of a few years she had built up a merchant fleet which seriously threatened those of other countries. Having arrived too late to create a real colonial empire of her own, such as those of France and England, she nevertheless succeeded in exploiting her colonies most intelligently.

In the field of industry she appeared to beat all competitors from a technical point of view; and even in those industries which were not hers by habit and tradition she developed so powerful an organization as to appear almost uncanny. Germany held first place not only in the production of iron, but in that of dyes and chemicals. Men went there from all parts of the world not only to trade but to acquire knowledge. An ominous threat weighed on the Empire, namely the constitution of the State itself, essentially militaristic and bureaucratic. Not even in Russia, perhaps, were the reins of power held in the hands of so few men as in Germany and Austria-Hungary.

A few years before the World War started one of the leading European statesmen told me that there was everything to be feared for the future of Europe where some three hundred millions, the inhabitants of Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, about two-thirds of the whole continent, were governed in an almost irresponsible manner by a man without will or intelligence, the Tsar of Russia; a madman without a spark of genius, the German Kaiser, and an obstinate old man hedged in by his ambition, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. Not more than thirty persons, he added, act as a controlling force on these three irresponsible sovereigns, who might assume, on their own initiative, the most terrible responsibilities.

The magnificent spiritual gifts of the Germans gave them an Emanuel Kant, the greatest thinker of modern times, Beethoven, their greatest exponent of music, and Goethe, their greatest poet. But the imperial Germany which came after the victory of 1870 had limited the spirit of independence even in the manifestations of literature and art. There still existed in Germany the most widely known men of science, the best universities, the most up-to-date schools; but the clumsy mechanism tended to crush rather than to encourage all personal initiative. Great manifestations of art or thought are not possible without the most ample spiritual liberty. Germany was the most highly organized country from a scientific point of view, but at the same time the country in which there was the least liberty for individual initiative. It went on like a huge machine: that explains why it almost stopped after being damaged by the war, and the whole life of the nation was paralysed while there were very few individual impulses of reaction. Imperial Germany has always been lacking in political ability, perhaps not only through a temperamental failing, but chiefly owing to her militaristic education.

Before the War Germany beat her neighbours in all the branches of human labour: in science, industry, banking, commerce, etc. But in one thing she did not succeed, and succeeded still less after the War, namely, in politics. When the German people was blessed with a political genius, such as Frederick the Great or Bismarck, it achieved the height of greatness and glory. But when the same people, after obtaining the maximum of power, found on its path William II with his mediocre collaborators, it ruined, by war, a colossal work, not only to the great detriment of the country, but also to that of the victors themselves, of whom it cannot be said with any amount of certainty, so far as those of the Continent are concerned, whether they are the winners or the losers, so great is the ruin threatening them, and so vast the material and moral losses sustained.

I have always felt the deepest aversion for William II. So few as ten years ago he was still treated with the greatest sympathy both in Europe and America. Even democracies