territories, must necessarily absorb huge sums for years to come, which
her citizens feel they ought not to be asked to contribute, and as her
internal debt was already overwhelming, it is only meet and just that
her wealthier partners should pool their war debts with hers and share
their financial resources with her and all their other allies. This, it
was argued, was an obvious corollary of the war alliance. Economically,
too, the Germans, while permitted to resume their industrial occupations
on a sufficiently large scale to enable them to earn the wherewithal to
live and discharge their financial obligations, should be denied free
scope to outstrip France, whose material prosperity is admittedly
essential to the maintenance of general peace and the permanence of the
new ordering. In this condition, it is further contended, our chivalrous
ally was entitled to special consideration because of her low
birth-rate, which is one of the mainsprings of her difficulties. This
may permanently keep her population from rising above the level of forty
million, whereas Germany, by the middle of the century, will have
reached the formidable total of eighty million, so that competition
between them would not be on a footing of equality. Hence the chances
should be evenly balanced by the action of the Conference, to be
continued by the League. Discriminating treatment was therefore a
necessity. And it should be so introduced that France should be free to
maintain a protective tariff, of which she had sore need for her foreign
trade, without causing umbrage to her allies. For they could not gainsay
that her position deserved special treatment.

Some of the Anglo-Saxon delegates took other ground, feeling unable to
countenance the postulate underlying those demands, namely, that the
Teuton race was to be forever anathema. They looked far enough ahead to
make due allowance for a future when conditions in Europe will be very
different from what they are to-day. The German race, they felt, being
numerous and virile, will not die out and cannot be suppressed. And as
it is also enterprising and resourceful it would be a mistake to render
it permanently hostile by the Allies overstepping the bounds of justice,
because in this case neither national nor general interests would be
furthered. You may hinder Germany, they argued, from acquiring the
hegemony of the world, but not from becoming the principal factor in
European evolution. If thirt