An adequate criticism of the Treaty that we are proposing to force on Germany would be as long as the Treaty itself. There are two main difficulties in such criticism; one is that, owing to the secret preparation of the Treaty and the public indifference as to its provisions, very few people in England have any idea even of what the financial and economic clauses amount to. German protests are ignored, of course, as mere "squealing." We have a general feeling that what is bad for the Germans is good for the world; and, anyway, we don't want to be bothered with Germany any more.
The other difficulty is the Treaty's formlessness and its want of design. A careful comparison of the articles and their appendices suggests that the essential policy of the whole is a compromise between, or rather a cobbling together of, two contradictory points of view, the French and the Anglo-Saxon; while in its externals it is an attempt to camouflage European Imperialism with American Idealism.
In the Jehad we have just fought against Germany, the low material object of the French was to extirpate; while that of the English was rather to enslave. The high moral object of the French was to rescue Alsace-Lorraine; the high moral object of the English was to protect Belgium. Consequently, reading the Treaty is something like reading the Koran. The mind cannot get the point of view or purpose. It loses itself in dicta, as determinative in detail for the weal or woe of mankind as they are disconnected in themselves and dissociated from any general doctrine, or even from any especial dogma. One soon gives up trying to grasp the Treaty. And one puts it aside with the consoling thought that "the Koran or the Sword" is good enough for those who, like the Huns, are not "people of the Law"; and that everything depends on the "idjra," the "interpretative effort" of future pundits.
There is something tragic about such petty killings and cruelties as those ordained by the sinister reactionaries of the Eden Hotel in Berlin. But there is something ludicrous about the miseries and murders _en masse_ organised by the highly respectable reactionaries of the Hotel Majestic. It is as though we:--
had resolved to extirpate the vipers With twenty Balliol men and forty lady typers.