ice, but merely upon the desire to secure her signature. He was not
in favor of any softening which would mar the justice of the settlement
as drafted. "We did not come over," he said, "simply to get any sort of
peace treaty signed. We came over to do justice. I believe, even, that a
hard peace is a good thing for Germany herself, in order that she may
know what an unjust war means. We must not forget what our soldiers
fought for, even if it means that we may have to fight again." Wilson's
stand for the treaty as drafted proved decisive. Certain modifications in
details were made, but the hasty and unwise enthusiasm of Lloyd George
for scrapping entire sections was not approved. The Conference could
hardly have survived wholesale concessions to Germany: to prolong the
crisis would have been a disastrous confession of incompetence. For what
confidence could have been placed in statesmen who were so patently
unable to make and keep their minds?

Still the German Government held firm and refused to sign. Foch inspected
the Allied troops on the Rhine and Pershing renounced his trip to
England, in order to be ready for the invasion that had been ordered if
the time limit elapsed without signature. Only at the last moment did the
courage of the Germans fail. A change of ministry brought into power men
who were willing to accept the inevitable humiliation. On the 20th of
June, the guns and sirens of Paris announced Germany's acceptance of the
peace terms and their promise to sign, and, surprising fact, a vast crowd
gathered on the Place de la Concorde to cheer Wilson; despite his loss of
popularity and the antagonism which he had aroused by his opposition to
national aspirations of one sort or another, he was still the man whose
name stood as symbol for peace.

Eight days later in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, where forty-eight
years before had been born the German Empire, the delegates of the Allied
states gathered to celebrate the obsequies of that Empire. It was no
peace of reconciliation, this treaty between the new German Republic and
the victorious Allies. The hatred and distrust inspired by five years of
war were not so soon to be liquidated. As the German delegates, awkward
and rather defiant in their long black frock coats, marched to the table
to affix their signatures, they were obviously, in the eyes of the Allied
delegates and the hundreds of spectators, always "the enemy." The place
of the Chinese at the tre