The Allied governments gave it, in any case, no serious consideration, and I doubt if anything which the German delegation could have said at that stage of the proceedings would have much influenced the result.
The commonest virtues of the individual are often lacking in the spokesmen of nations; a statesman representing not himself but his country may prove, without incurring excessive blame--as history often records--vindictive, perfidious, and egotistic.

These qualities are familiar in treaties imposed by victors.

But the German delegation did not succeed in exposing in burning and prophetic words the quality which chiefly distinguishes this transaction from all its historical predecessors--its insincerity.
This theme, however, must be for another pen than mine.

I am mainly concerned in what follows, not with the justice of the Treaty,--neither with the demand for penal justice against the enemy, nor with the obligation of contractual justice on the victor,--but with its wisdom and with its consequences.
I propose, therefore, in this chapter to set forth baldly the principal economic provisions of the Treaty, reserving, however, for the next my comments on the Reparation Chapter and on Germany's capacity to meet the payments there demanded from her.
The German economic system as it existed before the war depended on three main factors: I.Overseas commerce as represented by her mercantile marine, her colonies, her foreign investments, her exports, and the overseas connections of her merchants; II.

The exploitation of her coal and iron and the industries built upon them; III.