If only no hitch in the Peace interrupts the food-trains and the incoming ships, so that no more children die! Some modifications in the Peace Terms would, clearly, be accepted by the public opinion of the Allied countries.

No one, I believe, who has seen the Lens district, and the deliberate and cruel destruction of the French industrial north, will feel many qualms about the Saar valley.

We may hold a personal opinion that it might have been wiser for France in her own interests to claim the coal only.

But it is for France to decide, and it will be for the League of Nations to watch over the solution she has insisted on, in the common interest.

But concessions as to Upper Silesia and East Prussia would be received, I have little doubt, with general relief and assent; and the common sense of Europe will certainly see both the wisdom and expediency of setting German industry to work again as speedily as possible, and of so arranging and facilitating the payment of her huge money debt to the Allies that it should not weigh too intolerably on the life of an unborn generation--an innocent generation, who will grow up, as it is, inevitably, under one of the darkest shadows ever cast by history.
Meanwhile now that the just and stern verdict of Europe has been given on the war and its authors, the second and greater half of the Allied task remains.