their
representatives if the conditions imposed could or could not possibly
be carried out. Later on an exception, if only a purely formal one,
was made in the case of Hungary, whose delegates were heard; but it
will remain for ever a terrible precedent in modern history that,
against all pledges, all precedents and all traditions, the
representatives of Germany were never even heard; nothing was left to
them but to sign a treaty at a moment when famine and exhaustion and
threat of revolution made it impossible not to sign it.

If Germany had not signed she would have suffered less loss. But at
that time conditions at home with latent revolution threatening the
whole Empire, made it imperative to accept any solution, and all the
more as the Germans considered that they were not bound by their
signature, the decisions having been imposed by violence without any
hearing being given to the conquered party, and the most serious
decisions being taken without any real examination of the facts. In
the old law of the Church it was laid down that everyone must have a
hearing, even the devil: _Etiam diabulus audiatur_ (Even the devil
has the right to be heard). But the new democracy, which proposed to
install the society of the nations, did not even obey the precepts
which the dark Middle Ages held sacred on behalf of the accused.

Conditions in Germany were terribly difficult, and an army of two
hundred thousand men was considered by the military experts the
minimum necessary. The military commission presided over by Marshal
Foch left Germany an army of two hundred thousand men, recruited by
conscription, a Staff in proportion, service of one year, fifteen
divisions, 180 heavy guns, 600 field-guns. That is less than what
little States without any resources have now, three years after the
close of the War. But France at once imposed the reduction of the
German army to 100,000 men, no conscription but a twelve years'
service of paid soldiers, artillery reduced practically to nothing, no
heavy guns at all, very few field-guns. No opportunity was given for
discussion, nor was there any. Clemenceau put the problem in such a
way that discussion was out of the question: _C'est la France qui,
demain comme hier, sera face a l'Allemagne_. Lloyd George and Colonel
House confined themselves to saying that on this point France formally
expressed their views, Great Britain and the United States had no
right to oppose. Lloyd George was convi