nced that the measures were
too extreme and had tried on May 23, 1919, to modify them; but
France insisted on imposing on Germany this situation of tremendous
difficulty.

I have referred to the military conditions imposed on Germany:
destruction of all war material, fortresses and armament factories;
prohibition of any trade in arms; destruction of the fleet; occupation
of the west bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads for fifteen years;
allied control, with wide powers, over the execution of the military
and naval clauses of the treaty, with consequent subjection of
all public administrations and private companies to the will of a
foreigner, or rather of an enemy kept at the expense of Germany itself
and at no small expense, etc. In some of the inter-allied conferences
I have had to take note of what these commissions of control really
are, and their absurd extravagance, based on the argument that the
enemy must pay for everything.

The purport of France's action in the Conference was not to ensure
safe military guarantees against Germany but to destroy her, at any
rate to cut her up. And indeed, when she had got all she wanted and
Germany was helpless, she continued the same policy, even intensifying
it. Every bit of territory possible must be taken, German unity must
be broken, and not only military but industrial Germany must be
laid low under a series of controls and an impossible number of
obligations.

All know how, in Article 428 of the treaty, it is laid down, as a
guarantee of the execution of the treaty terms on the part of Germany,
or rather as a more extended military guarantee for France, that
German territory on the west bank of the Rhine and the bridgeheads
are to be occupied by allied and associated troops for fifteen years,
methods and regulations for such occupation following in Articles 429
and 432.

This occupation not only gives deep offence to Germany (France has
always looked back with implacable bitterness on the few months'
military occupation by her Prussian conquerors in the war of 1870),
but it paralyses all her activity and is generally judged to be
completely useless.

All the Allies were ready to give France every military guarantee
against any unjust aggression by Germany, but France wanted in
addition the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine. It was a very
delicate matter, and the notes presented to the Conference by Great
Britain on March 26 and April 2, by the United Stat