VERSAILLES TWENTY YEARS AFTER

Versailles carries a heavy load of guilt. Birdsall resurveys the treaty and the treaty makers from new angles, with a view to judging not only wherein lay the weaknesses, the dangers, but what the chances are for the next peace treaty to avoid the pitfalls. He studies the political, diplomatic and territorial manoeuvring, the strategy, the price demanded of Wilson in return for the League of Nations, the tone of appeasement. He re-views the scheme for dismemberment of Germany, and ventures the opinion that some such scheme must be followed this time, when victory is ours. He weighs the Streit plan, and finds it wanting, preferring a form of expanded League with teeth in it. The book is more interesting for the sidelights it throws on a treaty in the making, than for its platform.