permanent peace. The first of these was that
the enemy should be treated with a fairness equal to that accorded to the
Allies; the second was the principle that peoples should have the right
to choose the government by which they were to be ruled--the principle of
self-determination. Neither of these principles received full recognition
in the peace settlement. Yet their spirit was infused more completely
throughout the settlement than would have been the case had not Wilson
been at Paris, and to that extent the just and lasting qualities of the
peace were enhanced. In the matter of German reparations the question of
justice was not the point at issue; the damage committed by Germany
surpassed in value anything that the Allies could exact from her. As to
frontiers, the unbiased student will probably admit that full justice was
done Germany when the aspirations of France for annexation of the Saar
district and the provinces on the left bank of the Rhine were
disappointed; it was the barest justice to France, on the other hand,
that she should receive the coal mines of the former district and that
the latter should be demilitarized. In the question of Danzig, and the
Polish corridor to the sea, it was only fair to Poland that she receive
the adequate outlet which was necessary to her economic life and which
had been promised her, even if it meant the annexation of large German
populations, many of which had been artificially brought in as colonists
by the Berlin Government; and in setting up a free city of Danzig, the
Conference broke with the practices of old style diplomacy and paid a
tribute to the rights of peoples as against expediency. The same may be
said of the decision to provide for plebiscites in East Prussia and in
upper Silesia. On the other hand, the refusal to permit the incorporation
of the new, lesser Austria within Germany was at once unjust and
unwise--a concession to the most shortsighted of old-style diplomatic
principles.

In the reorganization of the former Hapsburg territories, Wilsonian
principles were always in the minds of the delegates, although in a few
cases they were honored more in the breach than in the observance. Wilson
himself surrendered to Italy extensive territories in the Tyrol south of
the Brenner which, if he had followed his own professions, would have been
left to Austria. A large Jugoslav population on the Julian Alps and in
Istria was placed under Italian rule. The new Czechosl