Treaty+of+Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles is one of the defining documents of the 20th Century. It will dominate international relations all the way to today. The reaffirmation of the colonial possessions, the punishment of the Germans, and the redrawing of maps all over the world has affected us profoundly.

We will start with looking at the opening comments by the French President, Raymond Pointcare, British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, French Prime Minister, George Clemenceau, and President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson. There is below a link to read a copy of the actual treaty. Following the link to the treaty is responses by the Germans government. In the German response is a list of counter-proposals which are realistic and totally ignored by the Clemenceau, Lloyd-George, and Wilson.

Links to the documents: flat

=French Premier Raymond Pointcare, =

Raymond Poincare's Welcoming Address, 18 January 1919
Gentlemen:

France greets and welcomes you and thanks you for having unanimously chosen as the seat of your labours the city which, for over four years, the enemy has made his principal military objective and which the valour of the Allied armies has victoriously defended against unceasingly renewed offensives.

Allow me to see in your decision the homage of all the nations that you represent towards a country which, still more than any others, has endured the sufferings of war, of which entire provinces, transformed into vast battlefields, have been systematically wasted by the invader, and which has paid the heaviest tribute to death.

France has borne these enormous sacrifices without having incurred the slightest responsibility for the frightful cataclysm which has overwhelmed the universe, and at the moment when this cycle of horror is ending, all the Powers whose delegates are assembled here may acquit themselves of any share in the crime which has resulted in so unprecedented a disaster.

What gives you authority to establish a peace of justice is the fact that none of the peoples of whom you are the delegates has had any part in injustice. Humanity can place confidence in you because you are not among those who have outraged the rights of humanity.

There is no need of further information or for special inquiries into the origin of the drama which has just shaken the world. The truth, bathed in blood, has already escaped from the Imperial archives. The premeditated character of the trap is today clearly proved.

In the hope of conquering, first, the hegemony of Europe and next the mastery of the world, the Central Empires, bound together by a secret plot, found the most abominable pretexts for trying to crush Serbia and force their way to the East. At the same time they disowned the most solemn undertakings in order to crush Belgium and force their way into the heart of France.

These are the two unforgettable outrages which opened the way to aggression. The combined efforts of Great Britain, France, and Russia broke themselves against that mad arrogance.

If, after long vicissitudes, those who wished to reign by the sword have perished by the sword, they have but themselves to blame; they have been destroyed by their own blindness. What could be more significant than the shameful bargains they attempted to offer to Great Britain and France at the end of July 1914, when to Great Britain they suggested: "Allow us to attack France on land and we will not enter the Channel"; and when they instructed their Ambassador to say to France: "We will only accept a declaration of neutrality on your part if you surrender to us Briey, Toul, and Verdun"?

It is in the light of these memories, gentlemen, that all the conclusions you will have to draw from the war will take shape.

Your nations entered the war successively, but came, one and all, to the help of threatened right. Like Germany, Great Britain and France had guaranteed the independence of Belgium.

Germany sought to crush Belgium. Great Britain and France both swore to save her. Thus, from the very beginning of hostilities, came into conflict the two ideas which for fifty months were to struggle for the dominion of the world - the idea of sovereign force, which accepts neither control nor check, and the idea of justice, which depends on the sword only to prevent or repress the abuse of strength.

Faithfully supported by her Dominions and Colonies, Great Britain decided that she could not remain aloof from a struggle in which the fate of every country was involved. She has made, and her Dominions and Colonies have made with her, prodigious efforts to prevent the war from ending in the triumph of the spirit of conquest and the destruction of right.

Japan, in her turn, only decided to take up arms out of loyalty to Great Britain, her great Ally, and from the consciousness of the danger in which both Asia and Europe would have stood, for the hegemony of which the Germanic Empires had dreamt.

Italy, who from the first had refused to lend a helping hand to German ambition, rose against an age-long foe only to answer the call of oppressed populations and to destroy at the cost of her blood the artificial political combination which took no account of human liberty.

Rumania resolved to fight only to realize that national unity which was opposed by the same powers of arbitrary force. Abandoned, betrayed, and strangled, she had to submit to an abominable treaty, the revision of which you will exact.

Greece, whom the enemy for many months tried to turn from her traditions and destinies, raised an army only to escape attempts at domination, of which she felt the growing threat.

Portugal, China, and Siam abandoned neutrality only to escape the strangling pressure of the Central Powers.

Thus it was the extent of German ambitions that brought so many peoples, great and small, to form a league against the same adversary.

And what shall I say of the solemn resolution taken by the United States in the spring of 1917 under the auspices of their illustrious President, Mr. Wilson, whom I am happy to greet here in the name of grateful France, and, if you will allow me to say so, gentlemen, in the name of all the nations represented in this room?

What shall I say of the many other American Powers which either declared themselves against Germany - Brazil, Cuba, Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras - or at least broke off diplomatic relations - Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay?

From north to south the New World rose with indignation when it saw the empires of Central Europe, after having let loose the war without provocation and without excuse, carry it on with fire, pillage, and massacre of inoffensive beings.

The intervention of the United States was something more, something greater, than a great political and military event: it was a supreme judgment passed at the bar of history by the lofty conscience of a free people and their Chief Magistrate on the enormous responsibilities incurred in the frightful conflict which was lacerating humanity.

It was not only to protect themselves from the audacious aims of German megalomania that the United States equipped fleets and created immense armies, but also, and above all, to defend an ideal of liberty over which they saw the huge shadow of the Imperial Eagle encroaching farther every day.

America, the daughter of Europe, crossed the ocean to wrest her mother from the humiliation of thraldom and to save civilization. The American people wished to put an end to the greatest scandal that has ever sullied the annals of mankind.

Autocratic governments, having prepared in the secrecy of the Chancelleries and the General Staff a map programme of universal domination, at the time fixed by their genius for intrigue let loose their packs and sounded the horns for the chase, ordering science at the very time when it was beginning to abolish distances, bring men closer, and make life sweeter, to leave the bright sky towards which it was soaring and to place itself submissively at the service of violence, lowering the religious idea to the extent of making God the complacent auxiliary of their passions and the accomplice of their crimes; in short, counting as naught the traditions and wills of peoples, the lives of citizens, the honour of women, and all those principles of public and private morality which we for our part have endeavored to keep unaltered through the war and which neither nations nor individuals can repudiate or disregard with impunity.

While the conflict was gradually extending over the entire surface of the earth the clanking of chains was heard here and there, and captive nationalities from the depths of their age-long jails cried out to us for help.

Yet more, they escaped to come to our aid. Poland came to life again and sent us troops. The Czecho-Slovaks won their right to independence in Siberia, in France, and in Italy. The Jugo-Slays, the Armenians, the Syrians and Lebanese, the Arabs, all the oppressed peoples, all the victims, long helpless or resigned, of great historic deeds of injustice, all the martyrs of the past, all the outraged consciences, all the strangled liberties revived at the clash of our arms, and turned towards us, as their natural defenders.

Thus the war gradually attained the fullness of its first significance, and became, in the fullest sense of the term, a crusade of humanity for Right; and if anything can console us in part at least, for the losses we have suffered, it is assuredly the thought that our victory is also the victory of Right.

This victory is complete, for the enemy only asked for the armistice to escape from an irretrievable military disaster. In the interest of justice and peace it now rests with you to reap from this victory its full fruits in order to carry out this immense task. You have decided to admit, at first, only the Allied or associated Powers, and, in so far as their interests are involved in the debates, the nations which remained neutral.

You have thought that the terms of peace ought to be settled among ourselves before they are communicated to those against whom we have together fought the good fight. The solidarity which has united us during the war and has enabled us to win military success ought to remain unimpaired during the negotiations for, and after the signing of, the Treaty .

It is not only governments, but free peoples, who are represented here. Through the test of danger they have learned to know and help one another. They want their intimacy of yesterday to assure the peace of tomorrow. Vainly would our enemies seek to divide us. If they have not yet renounced their customary manoeuvres, they will soon find that they are meeting today, as during the hostilities, a homogeneous block which nothing will be able to disintegrate.

Even before the armistice you placed that necessary unity under the standard of the lofty moral and political truths of which President Wilson has nobly made himself the interpreter.

And in the light of those truths you intend to accomplish your mission. You will, therefore, seek nothing but justice, "justice that has no favourites," justice in territorial problems, justice in financial problems, justice in economic problems.

But justice is not inert, it does not submit to injustice. What it demands first, when it has been violated, are restitution and reparation for the peoples and individuals who have been despoiled or maltreated. In formulating this lawful claim, it obeys neither hatred nor an instinctive or thoughtless desire for reprisals. It pursues a twofold object - to render to each his due, and not to encourage crime through leaving it unpunished.

What justice also demands, inspired by the same feeling, is the punishment of the guilty and effective guaranties against an active return of the spirit by which they were tempted; and it is logical to demand that these guaranties should be given, above all, to the nations that have been, and might again be most exposed to aggressions or threats, to those who have many times stood in danger of being submerged by the periodic tide of the same invasions.

What justice banishes is the dream of conquest and imperialism, contempt for national will, the arbitrary exchange of provinces between states as though peoples were but articles of furniture or pawns in a game.

The time is no more when diplomatists could meet to redraw with authority the map of the empires on the corner of a table. If you are to remake the map of the world it is in the name of the peoples, and on condition that you shall faithfully interpret their thoughts, and respect the right of nations, small and great, to dispose of themselves, and to reconcile it with the right, equally sacred, of ethnical and religious minorities - a formidable task, which science and history, your two advisers, will contribute to illumine and facilitate.

You will naturally strive to secure the material and moral means of subsistence for all those peoples who are constituted or reconstituted into states; for those who wish to unite themselves to their neighbours; for those who divide themselves into separate units; for those who reorganize themselves according to their regained traditions; and, lastly, for all those whose freedom you have already sanctioned or are about to sanction.

You will not call them into existence only to sentence them to death immediately. You would like your work in this, as in all other matters, to be fruitful and lasting.

While thus introducing into the world as much harmony as possible, you will, in conformity with the fourteenth of the propositions unanimously adopted by the Great Allied Powers, establish a general League of Nations, which will be a supreme guarantee against any fresh assaults upon the right of peoples.

You do not intend this International Association to be directed against anybody in future. It will not of set purpose shut out anybody, but, having been organized by the nations that have sacrificed themselves in defence of Right, it will receive from them its statutes and fundamental rules. It will lay down conditions to which its present or future adherents will submit, and, as it is to have for its essential aim to prevent, as far as. possible, the renewal of wars, it will, above all, seek to gain respect for the peace which you will have established, and will find it the less difficult to maintain in proportion as this peace will in itself imply greater realities of justice and safer guaranties of stability.

By establishing this new order of things you will meet the aspiration of humanity, which, after the frightful convulsions of these bloodstained years, ardently wishes to feel itself protected by a union of free peoples against the ever-possible revivals of primitive savagely.

An immortal glory will attach to the names of the nations and the men who have desired to co-operate in this grand work in faith and brotherhood, and who have taken pains to eliminate from the future peace causes of disturbance and instability.

This very day forty-eight years ago, on January 18, 1871, the German Empire was proclaimed by an army of invasion in the Chateau at Versailles. It was consecrated by the theft of two French provinces; it was thus vitiated from its origin and by the fault of the founders; born in injustice, it has ended in opprobrium.

You are assembled in order to repair the evil that it has done and to prevent a recurrence of it. You hold in your hands the future of the world. I leave you, gentlemen, to your grave deliberations, and I declare the Conference of Paris open.

Source: //Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VII,// ed. Charles F. Horne//, National Alumni 1923//

=David Lloyd George: =

David Lloyd George's Opening Address Seconding Woodrow Wilson's Nomination of Georges Clemenceau as Conference President, 18 January 1919
Gentlemen, it is not only a pleasure for me, but a real privilege, to support in the name of the British Empire the motion which has been proposed by President Wilson.

I shall do it for the reasons which the President has just expressed with so much eloquence. It is homage to a man that we wish to pay before all.

When I was at school M. Clemenceau was already one of the moving forces in French politics. Already his renown had spread far. And, were it not for this memory of my childhood, I should be tempted to believe the legend which is commonly spread abroad of the eternal youth of M. Clemenceau.

In all the conferences at which we have been present the most alert, the most vigorous, in a word, the youngest man, was always M. Clemenceau. By the freshness of his mind and his indefatigable energy he displayed his youth at every moment. He is indeed "the grand young man" of France.

But nothing will give us greater pleasure than to see him take the place which we propose that he should accept. No one is better qualified for that place. We have often had discussions together. We have often been in agreement and sometimes we have disagreed, and in that case we have always been in the habit of expressing our opinions with all the force and vigour which belong to two Celts like ourselves.

I believe that in the debates of this Conference there will at first inevitably be delays, but I guarantee from my knowledge of M. Clemenceau that there will be no time wasted. That is indispensable. The world is thirsting for peace. Millions of men are waiting to return to their normal life, and they will not forgive us too long delays.

I am sure that M. Clemenceau will not allow useless delays to occur. He is one of the greatest living orators, but he knows that the finest eloquence is that which gets things done and that the worst is that which delays them. Another reason for congratulating him on occupying the place which we are about to give him is his indomitable courage, of which he has given proof in days of difficulty.

In these days his energy and presence of mind have done more than all the acts of us others to ensure victory. There is no man of whom one can say that he has contributed more to surmount those terrible difficulties which were so close to the final triumph.

He represents the admirable energy, courage and resource of his great people, and that is why I desire to add my voice to that of President Wilson and to ask for his election to the presidency of the Peace Conference.

Source: //Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VII,// ed. Charles F. Horne//, National Alumni 1923//

=George Clemenceau: =

Georges Clemenceau's Opening Address as Conference President, 18 January 1919
Gentlemen, you would not understand it if, after listening to the words of the two eminent men who have just spoken, I were to keep silent.

I cannot elude the necessity of expressing my lively gratitude, my deep gratitude, both to the illustrious President Wilson and to the Prime Minister of Great Britain, as well as to Baron Sonnino, for the words which they have uttered.

In the past, in the days of my youth - long ago now, as Mr. Lloyd George has reminded me - when I travelled over America and England, I used always to hear the French blamed for that excess of politeness which led them beyond the boundaries of the truth. Listening to the American statesman and the British statesman, I asked myself whether in Paris they had not acquired our national vice of flattering urbanity.

It is necessary, gentlemen, to point out that my election is due necessarily to lofty international tradition, and to the time-honoured courtesy shown toward the country which has the honour to welcome the Peace Conference in its capital. The proofs of "friendship" - as they will allow me to call it - of President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George touched me profoundly, because in these proofs may be seen a new force for all three of us which will enable us, with the help of this entire Conference, to carry through the arduous task entrusted to us. I draw new confidence from it for the success of our efforts.

President Wilson has good authority for his remark that we have here for the first time a collection of delegates from all the civilized peoples of the earth. The greater the sanguinary catastrophe which devastated and ruined one of the richest regions of France, the more ample and more splendid should be the reparation - not merely the reparation for material acts, the ordinary reparation, if I may venture to say so, which is due to us - but the nobler and loftier reparation - we are going to try to secure, so that the peoples may at last escape from this fatal embrace, which, heaping up ruins and sorrows, terrorizes the populations and prevents them from devoting themselves freely to their work for fear of the enemies who may spring up at any moment.

It is a great and noble ambition that has come to us all. We must hope that success will crown our efforts. This can only be if we have our ideas clear-cut and well defined.

I said in the Chamber of Deputies some days ago, and I make a point of repeating the statement here, that success is possible only if we remain firmly united. We have come here as friends. We must pass through that door as brothers. That is the first reflection which I am anxious to express to you. Everything must be subordinated to the necessity for a closer and closer union between the peoples which have taken part in this great war.

The Society of Nations has its being here, it has its being in you. It is for you to make it live, and for that there is no sacrifice to which we are not ready to consent. I do not doubt that as you are all of this disposition we shall arrive at this result, but only on condition that we exercise impartial pressure on ourselves to reconcile what in appearance may be opposing interests in the higher view of a greater, happier, and better humanity.

That, gentlemen, is what I had to say to you.

I am touched beyond all expression by the proof of confidence and regard which you have been kind enough to give me. The program of the Conference, the aim marked out by President Wilson, is no longer merely peace for the territories, great and small, with which we are directly concerned; it is no longer merely a peace for the continents, it is peace for the peoples.

This program speaks for itself; there is nothing to be added to it. Let us try, gentlemen, to do our work speedily and well. I am handing to the Bureau the rules of procedure of the Conference, and these will be distributed to you all.

I come now to the order of the day. The first question is as follows: "The responsibility of the authors of the war." The second is thus expressed: "Penalties for crimes committed during the war." The third is: "International legislation in regard to labour."

The Powers whose interests are only in part involved are also invited to send in memoranda in regard to matters of all kinds - territorial, financial, or economic - which affect them particularly. These memoranda should be addressed to the general secretariat of the Conference.

This system is somewhat novel. Our desire in asking you to proceed thus is to save time. All the nations represented here are free to present their claims. You will kindly send in these memoranda as speedily as possible, as we shall then get on with the work which we shall submit for your consideration. You can deal with the third question from the standpoint of the organization of labour.

It is a very vast field. But we beg of you to begin by examining the question as to the responsibility of the authors of the war. I do not need to set forth our reasons for this. If we wish to establish justice in the world we can do so now, for we have won victory and can impose the penalties demanded by justice.

We shall insist on the imposition of penalties on the authors of the abominable crimes committed during the war. Has any one any question to ask in regard to this? If not, I would again remind you that every delegation should devote itself to the study of this first question, which has been made the subject of reports by eminent jurists, and of a report which will be sent to you entitled, "An Inquiry into the Criminal Responsibility of the Emperor William II."

The perusal of this brochure will, without doubt, facilitate your work. In Great Britain and in America studies on this point have also been published. No one having any remark to make, the program is adopted.

It only remains for me to say, gentlemen, that the order of the day for our next sitting will begin with the question of the Society of Nations. Our order of the day, gentlemen, is now brought to an end. Before closing the sitting, I should like to know whether any delegate of the Powers represented has any question to submit to the Bureau. As we must work in complete agreement, it is to be desired that members of the Conference shall submit all the observations they consider necessary.

The Bureau will welcome the expression of opinions of all kinds. and will answer all questions addressed to it.

No one has anything further to say? The sitting is closed.

Source: //Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VII,// ed. Charles F. Horne//, National Alumni 1923//

=Woodrow Wilson =

Woodrow Wilson's Opening Address Nominating Georges Clemenceau as President of the Conference, 18 January 1919
I have the great honour to propose as definitive president of this conference the French Premier, M. Clemenceau.

I do so in conformity with usage. I should do it even if it were only a question of paying homage to the French Republic, but I do it also because I desire, and you certainly desire with me, to pay homage to the man himself.

France, as it is, would alone deserve this honour, but we are today in her capital, and it is here that this great Conference has met. France, by her sufferings and sacrifices during the war, deserves a special tribute. Moreover, Paris is her ancient and splendid capital, where more than once these great assemblages, on which the fate of the world has depended, have met.

I am happy to think that the meeting which is beginning crowns the series of these meetings. This Conference may be considered in some respects as the final crowning of the diplomatic history of the world tip to this day, for never have so many nations been represented at the same time to solve problems which in so high a degree interest the whole world.

Moreover, this meeting signifies for us the end of this terrible war, which threatened to destroy civilization and the world itself. It is a delightful sensation for us to feel that we are meeting at a moment when this terrible menace has ceased to exist.

But it is not only to France, it is to the man who is her great servant that we wish to pay homage and to do honour. We have learned, since we have had relations with him, and since he has been at the head of the French Government, to admire the power of his direction and the force and good sense of his actions.

But, more than this, those who know him, those who have worked in close connection with him, have acquired for him a real affection. Those who, like ourselves, have seen him work in these recent times know how much he is united with us, and with what ardour he is working for that which we ourselves desire.

For we all desire the same thing. We desire before all to lift from the shoulders of humanity the frightful weight which is pressing on them, so that humanity, released from this weight, may at last return joyfully to work.

Thus, gentlemen, it is not only to the Premier of the French Republic, it is to M. Clemenceau that I propose you should give the presidency of this assemblage.

Source: //Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VII,// ed. Charles F. Horne//, National Alumni 1923//

=Link to the actual Peace Treaty, the treaty is over 1000 pages long: =

[|Treaty of Versailles]

=German Response with counter-proposals: =

Leader of the German Peace Delegation Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau's Letter to Paris Peace Conference President Georges Clemenceau on the Subject of Peace Terms, May 1919
Mr. President:

I have the honour to transmit to you herewith the observations of the German delegation on the draft treaty of peace.

We came to Versailles in the expectation of receiving a peace proposal based on the agreed principles. We were firmly resolved to do everything in our power with a view of fulfilling the grave obligations which we had undertaken. We hoped for the peace of justice which had been promised to us.

We were aghast when we read in documents the demands made upon us, the victorious violence of our enemies. The more deeply we penetrate into the spirit of this treaty, the more convinced we become of the impossibility of carrying it out. The exactions of this treaty are more than the German people can bear.

With a view to the re-establishment of the Polish State we must renounce indisputably German territory - nearly the whole of the Province of West Prussia, which is preponderantly German; of Pomerania; Danzig, which is German to the core; we must let that ancient Hanse town be transformed into a free State under Polish suzerainty.

We must agree that East Prussia shall be amputated from the body of the State, condemned to a lingering death, and robbed of its northern portion, including Memel, which is purely German.

We must renounce Upper Silesia for the benefit of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia, although it has been in close political connection with Germany for more than 750 years, is instinct with German life, and forms the very foundation of industrial life throughout East Germany.

Preponderantly German circles (//Kreise//) must be ceded to Belgium, without sufficient guarantees that the plebiscite, which is only to take place afterward, will be independent. The purely German district of the Saar must be detached from our empire, and the way must be paved for its subsequent annexation to France, although we owe her debts in coal only, not in men.

For fifteen years Rhenish territory must be occupied, and after those fifteen years the Allies have power to refuse the restoration of the country; in the interval the Allies can take every measure to sever the economic and moral links with the mother country, and finally to misrepresent the wishes of the indigenous population.

Although the exaction of the cost of the war has been expressly renounced, yet Germany, thus cut in pieces and weakened, must declare herself ready in principle to bear all the war expenses of her enemies, which would exceed many times over the total amount of German State and private assets.

Meanwhile her enemies demand, in excess of the agreed conditions, reparation for damage suffered by their civil population, and in this connection Germany must also go bail for her allies. The sum to be paid is to be fixed by our enemies unilaterally, and to admit of subsequent modification and increase. No limit is fixed, save the capacity of the German people for payment, determined not by their standard of life, but solely by their capacity to meet the demands of their enemies by their labour. The German people would thus be condemned to perpetual slave labour.

In spite of the exorbitant demands, the reconstruction of our economic life is at the same time rendered impossible. We must surrender our merchant fleet. We are to renounce all foreign securities. We are to hand over to our enemies our property in all German enterprises abroad, even in the countries of our allies.

Even after the conclusion of peace the enemy States are to have the right of confiscating all German property. No German trader in their countries will be protected from these war measures. We must completely renounce our colonies, and not even German missionaries shall have the right to follow their calling therein.

We most thus renounce the realization of all our aims in the spheres of politics, economics, and ideas.

Even in internal affairs we are to give up the right to self-determination. The international Reparation Commission receives dictatorial powers over the whole life of our people in economic and cultural matters. Its authority extends far beyond that which the empire, the German Federal Council, and the Reichstag combined ever possessed within the territory of the empire.

This commission has unlimited control over the economic life of the State, of communities, and of individuals. Further, the entire educational and sanitary system depends on it. It can keep the whole German people in mental thraldom. In order to increase the payments due, by the thrall, the commission can hamper measures for the social protection of the German worker.

In other spheres also Germany's sovereignty is abolished. Her chief waterways are subjected to international administration; she must construct in her territory such canals and such railways as her enemies wish; she must agree to treaties the contents of which are unknown to her, to be concluded by her enemies with the new States on the east, even when they concern her own functions. The German people are excluded from the League of Nations, to which is entrusted all work of common interest to the world.

Thus must a whole people sign the decree for its proscription, nay, its own death sentence.

Germany knows that she must make sacrifices in order to attain peace. Germany knows that she has, by agreement, undertaken to make these sacrifices, and will go in this matter to the utmost limits of her capacity.

//Counter-proposals//

1. Germany offers to proceed with her own disarmament in advance of all other peoples, in order to show that she will help to usher in the new era of the peace of justice. She gives up universal compulsory service and reduces her army to 100,000 men, except as regards temporary measures. She even renounces the warships which her enemies are still willing to leave in her hands. She stipulates, however, that she shall be admitted forthwith as a State with equal rights into the League of Nations. She stipulates that a genuine League of Nations shall come into being, embracing all peoples of goodwill, even her enemies of today. The League must be inspired by a feeling of responsibility toward mankind and have at its disposal a power to enforce its will sufficiently strong and trusty to protect the frontiers of its members.

2. In territorial questions Germany takes up her position unreservedly on the ground of the Wilson program. She renounces her sovereign right in Alsace-Lorraine, but wishes a free plebiscite to take place there. She gives up the greater part of the province of Posen, the district incontestably Polish in population, together with the capital. She is prepared to grant to Poland, under international guarantees, free and secure access to the sea by ceding free ports at Danzig, Konigsberg, and Memel, by an agreement regulating the navigation of the Vistula and by special railway conventions. Germany is prepared to insure the supply of coal for the economic needs of France, especially from the Saar region, until such time as the French mines are once more in working order. The preponderantly Danish districts of Schleswig will be given up to Denmark on the basis of a plebiscite. Germany demands that the right of self-determination shall also be respected where the interests of the Germans in Austria and Bohemia are concerned. She is ready to subject all her colonies to administration by the community of the League of Nations, if she is recognized as its mandatory.

3. Germany is prepared to make payments incumbent on her in accordance with the agreed program of peace up to a maximum sum of 100,000,000,000 gold marks, 20,000,000,000 by May 1, 1926, and the balance (80,000,000,000) in annual payments, without interest. These payments shall in principle be equal to a fixed percentage of the German Imperial and State revenues. The annual payment shall approximate to the former peace budget. For the first ten years the annual payments shall not exceed 1,000,000,000 gold marks a year. The German taxpayer shall not be less heavily burdened than the taxpayer of the most heavily burdened State among those represented on the Reparation Commission. Germany presumes in this connection that she will not have to make any territorial sacrifices beyond those mentioned above and that she will recover her freedom of economic movement at home and abroad.

4. Germany is prepared to devote her entire economic strength to the service of the reconstruction. She wishes to cooperate effectively in the reconstruction of the devastated regions of Belgium and Northern France. To make good the loss in production of the destroyed mines of Northern France, up to 20,000,000 tons of coal will be delivered annually for the first five years, and up to 80,000,000 tons for the next five years. Germany will facilitate further deliveries of coal to France, Belgium, Italy, and Luxemburg. Germany is, moreover, prepared to make considerable deliveries of benzol, coal tar, and sulphate of ammonia, as well as dyestuffs and medicines.

5. Finally, Germany offers to put her entire merchant tonnage into a pool of the world's shipping, to place at the disposal of her enemies a part of her freight space as part payment of reparation and to build for them for a series of years in German yards an amount of tonnage exceeding their demands.

6. In order to replace the river boats destroyed in Belgium and Northern France, Germany offers river craft from her own resources.

7. Germany thinks that she sees an appropriate method for the prompt fulfilment of her obligation to make reparations conceding participation in coal mines to insure deliveries of coal.

8. Germany, in accordance with the desires of the workers of the whole world, wishes to insure to them free and equal rights. She wishes to insure to them in the Treaty of Peace the right to take their own decisive part in the settlement of social policy and social protection.

9. The German delegation again makes its demand for a neutral inquiry into the responsibility for the war and culpable acts in conduct. An impartial commission should have the right to investigate on its own responsibility the archives of all the belligerent countries and all the persons who took an important part in the war. Nothing short of confidence that the question of guilt will be examined dispassionately can leave the peoples lately at war with each other in the proper frame of mind for the formation of the League of Nations.

These are only the most important among the proposals which we have to make. As regards other great sacrifices, and also as regards the details, the delegation refers to the accompanying memorandum and the annex thereto.

The time allowed us for the preparation of this memorandum was so short that it was impossible to treat all the questions exhaustively. A fruitful and illuminating negotiation could only take place by means of oral discussion.

This treaty of peace is to be the greatest achievement of its kind in all history. There is no precedent for the conduct of such comprehensive negotiations by an exchange of written notes only.

The feeling of the peoples who have made such immense sacrifices makes them demand that their fate should be decided by an open, unreserved exchange of ideas on the principle: "Quite open covenants of peace openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly in the public view."

Germany is to put her signature to the treaty laid before her and to carry it out. Even in her need, justice for her is too sacred a thing to allow her to stoop to achieve conditions which she cannot undertake to carry out.

Treaties of peace signed by the great powers have, it is true, in the history of the last decades, again and again proclaimed the right of the stronger. But each of these treaties of peace has been a factor in originating and prolonging the world war. Whenever in this war the victor has spoken to the vanquished, at Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, his words were but the seeds of future discord.

The lofty aims which our adversaries first set before themselves in their conduct of the war, the new era of an assured peace of justice, demand a treaty instinct with a different spirit.

Only the cooperation of all nations, a cooperation of hands and spirits, can build up a durable peace. We are under no delusions regarding the strength of the hatred and bitterness which this war has engendered, and yet the forces which are at work for a union of mankind are stronger now than ever they were before.

The historic task of the Peace Conference of Versailles is to bring about this union.

Accept, Mr. President, the expression of my distinguished consideration.

BROCKDORFF-RANTZAU

Source: //Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VII,// ed. Charles F. Horne//, National Alumni 1923//