ce terms had been carefully
considered in advance, whereas the Allies prepared for war during
hostilities, and for peace during the negotiations. And they went about
this in a leisurely, lackadaisical way, whereas expedition was the key
to success.

As for a durable peace, involving general disarmament, it should have
been outlined in a comprehensive program, which the delegates had not
drawn up, and it would have become feasible only if the will to pursue
it proceeded from principle, not from circumstances. In no case could it
be accomplished without the knowledge and co-operation of the peoples
themselves, nor within the time-limits fixed for the work of the
Conference. For the abolition of war and the creation of a new ordering,
like human progress, is a long process. It admits of a variety of
beginnings, but one can never be sure of the end, seeing that it
presupposes a radical change in the temper of the peoples, one might
almost say a remodeling of human nature. It can only be the effect of a
variety of causes, mainly moral, operating over a long period of time.
Peace with Germany was a matter for the governments concerned; the
elimination of war could only be accomplished by the peoples. The one
was in the main a political problem, the other social, economical, and
ethical.

Mr. Balfour asserted optimistically[290] that the work of concluding
peace with Germany was a very simple matter. None the less it took the
Conference over five months to arrange it. So desperately slow was the
progress of the Supreme Council that on the 213th day of the Peace
Conference,[291] two months after the Germans had signed the conditions,
not one additional treaty had been concluded, nay, none was even ready
for signature. The Italian plenipotentiary, Signor Tittoni, thereupon
addressed his colleagues frankly on the subject and asked them whether
they were not neglecting their primary duty, which was to conclude
treaties with the various enemies who had ceased to fight in November of
the previous year and were already waiting for over nine months to
resume normal life, and whether the delegates were justified in seeking
to discharge the functions of a supreme board for the government of all
Europe. He pointed out that nobody could hope to profit by the state of
disorder and paralysis for which this procrastination was answerable,
the economic effects making themselves felt sooner or later in every
country. He added that the cost o