ow of the far mightier power which had trampled so brutally
upon her. You may strip Germany of her colonies, reduce her armaments
to a mere police force and her navy to that of a fifth-rate power; all
the same, in the end, if she feels that she has been unjustly treated
in the peace of 1919, she will find means of exacting retribution from
her conquerors. The impression, the deep impression, made upon the
human heart by four years of unexampled slaughter will disappear with
the hearts upon which it has been marked by the terrible sword of the
Great War. The maintenance of peace will then depend upon there
being no causes of exasperation constantly stirring up the spirit of
patriotism, of justice or of fair play to achieve redress. Our terms
may be severe, they may be stern and even ruthless, but at the same
time they can be so just that the country on which they are imposed
will feel in its heart that it has no right to complain. But
injustice, arrogance, displayed in the hour of triumph, will never be
forgotten nor forgiven.

For these reasons I am, therefore, strongly averse to transferring
more Germans from German rule to the rule of some other nation than
can possibly be helped. I cannot conceive any greater cause of future
war than that the German people, who have certainly proved themselves
one of the most vigorous and powerful races in the world, should be
surrounded by a number of small states, many of them consisting of
people who have never previously set up a stable government for
themselves, but each of them containing large masses of Germans
clamouring for reunion with their native land. The proposal of the
Polish Commission that we should place 2,100,000 Germans under the
control of a people of a different religion and which has never proved
its capacity for stable self-government throughout its history, must,
in my judgment, lead sooner or later to a new war in the East of
Europe. What I have said about the Germans is equally true about the
Magyars. There will never be peace in South-Eastern Europe if every
little state now coming into being is to have a large Magyar Irredenta
within its borders.

I would therefore take as a guiding principle of the peace that as
far as is humanly possible the different races should be allocated
to their motherlands, and that this human criterion should have
precedence over considerations of strategy or economics or
communications, which can usually be adjusted by other