aty table was empty; for them it was no peace of
justice that gave Shantung to the Japanese, and they would not sign. The
South African delegate, General Smuts, could not sign without explaining
the balance of considerations which led him to sanction an international
document containing so many flaws.

It was not, indeed, the complete peace of justice which Wilson had
promised and which, at times, he has since implied he believed it to be.
Belgians complained that they had not been given the left bank of the
Scheldt; Frenchmen were incensed because their frontier had not been
protected; Italians were embittered by the refusal to approve their
claims on the Adriatic; radical leaders, the world over, were frank in
their expression of disappointment at the failure to inaugurate a new
social order. The acquiescence in Japanese demands for Kiau-Chau was
clearly dictated by expediency rather than by justice. Austria, reduced
in size and bereft of material resources, was cut off from the sea and
refused the possibility of joining with Germany. The nationalistic
ambitions of the Rumanians, of the Jugoslavs, of the Czechoslovaks, and
of the Poles were aroused to such an extent that conflicts could hardly
be avoided. Hungary, deprived of the rim of subject nationalities, looked
forward to the first opportunity of reclaiming her sovereignty over them.
The Ruthenians complained of Polish domination. Further to the east lay
the great unsettled problem of Russia.

But the most obvious flaws in the treaty are to be found in the economic
clauses. It was a mistake to compel Germany to sign a blank check in the
matter of reparations. Germany and the world needed to know the exact
amount that was to be paid, in order that international commerce might be
set upon a stable basis. The extent of control granted to the Allies over
German economic life was unwise and unfair.

Complete justice certainly was not achieved by President Wilson at Paris,
and it may be questioned whether all the decisions can be regarded even
as expedient. The spirit of the Fourteen Points, as commonly interpreted,
had not governed the minds of those who sat at the council table. The
methods adopted by the Council of Ten and the Council of Four were by no
means those to which the world looked forward when it hailed the ideal
expressed in the phrase, "Open covenants openly arrived at." The "freedom
of the seas," if it meant the disappearance of the peculiar position h