e in a
postponement of the problem by not naming any definite sum which Germany
must pay, but requiring her to acknowledge full liability. The
disadvantages of this method were apparent to the President and his
financial advisers, for it was clear that the economic stability of the
world could not be restored until the world knew how much Germany was
going to pay.

[Footnote 13: At first the French and British refused to name any
specific sum that might be collected from Germany, requesting the
Americans to submit estimates. The latter named $5,000,000,000 as
representing a sum that might be collected prior to May 1, 1921, and
thereafter a capital sum as high as $25,000,000,000, always provided that
the other clauses in the treaty did not too greatly drain Germany's
resources. After some weeks of discussion the French experts stated that
if the figures could be revised up to $40,000,000,000 they would
recommend them to their chiefs. The British refused to accept a figure
below $47,000,000,000.]

Equally difficult was the problem of the French frontier. The return of
Alsace-Lorraine to France was unanimously approved. The French claimed in
addition, the districts of the Saar, with their valuable coal-fields, a
portion of which had been left to France after the first abdication of
Napoleon but annexed to Prussia after his defeat at Waterloo; and they
contended that if the German territories west of the Rhine were not to be
annexed to France, they must at least be separated from Germany, which
had secured a threatening military position mainly through their
possession. American experts had felt inclined to grant a part of the
Saar region to France as compensation for the wanton destruction of
French mines at Lens and Valenciennes by the Germans; but both Wilson and
Lloyd George were opposed to absolute annexation of the district which
the French demanded, including, as it did, more than six hundred thousand
Germans and no French. Wilson was definitely hostile to any attempt to
separate from the Fatherland such purely German territory as that on the
left bank of the Rhine. The Allies, as well as himself, had given
assurances that they did not aim at the dismemberment of Germany, and it
was on the basis of such assurances that the Germans had asked for an
armistice. Wilson admitted that from the point of view of military
strategy the argument of Foch was unanswerable, under the old conditions;
but he insisted that the Leag