This section is common to all the treaties and provided for the return of prisoners of war and for the upkeep and maintenance of graves. It calls for no special remark.
This is the most disputable of all parts of the German treaty, as it is the only one that remained wholly a dead letter. It provided (Art. 227) for the trial of William II, "formerly German Emperor, for a supreme offence against inter national morality and the sanctity of treaties." An international tribunal of five, with one member nominated by each of the Principal Allies, was to try this high-placed offender. The state ment of the procedure to be adopted, and of the punishment to be inflicted, was judiciously vague. The project never came to any thing because the Netherlands Government, in whose territory the ex-Kaiser had taken refuge, refused to surrender him in accordance with the Allied request.
Articles 228-30 provided for the punishment before military tribunals of the allies of Germans "accused of having committed acts in violation of the laws and customs of war." Eventually a list of over too such criminals was drawn up, and their extra dition demanded from Germany. Finally, about a dozen of them were tried in Germany itself by Germans and, though only a few were convicted, the Allied Governments decided to drop the matter, for extradition was impossible without fighting. In 1925 Field-Marshal Hindenburg, himself a "war criminal," was elected president of the republic without any formal Allied protest.
This is among the most celebrated and important of the sections of the treaty, and it was affected more than any other by outside and popular influences. The pay ments demanded were called "reparation" rather than indemnity. Article 232 defined (in connection with an annex) the categories of loss and damage under which Germany was liable. Among these was included pensions to civilians. This seems clearly con trary to the definition given in the memo. of Nov. 5,1918, which has been quoted above. It would appear from the doubtful manner in which this question is handled in the covering letter and reply of June 16 that the Allies themselves were uneasy upon this point.
The remainder of Part VIII is concerned with the ways and means of paying reparation, and a body, known as the Reparation Commission, was set up with very extensive powers. It appears that D. Lloyd George intended these powers to be used for the pur pose of greatly reducing the ultimate liabilities of Germany, but the absence of the United States from the commission and the French influence upon it, together with English popular opinion, defeated this idea. The later course of reparation cannot detain us here, but the original proposals were greatly modified in execu tion. Mr. Keynes estimated at the time that about £2,000,000,000 was all that could be got out of Germany, and it is pretty certain that £3,000,000,000, or at most £4,000,000,000, represented the utmost they could have paid. The institution of the Dawes Scheme in 1924 put an end to the original reparation clauses.
The payments in kind provided for in Article 236, and in various annexes, were based on sounder ground. They included, among other things, "the ton for ton, and class for class" replacement of Allied merchant shipping by German vessels. Great Britain ob tained most under this head ; France most by deliveries of coal and coal derivatives; Belgium by livestock.
This section is largely technical, dealing with order of priority, with the meeting of spe cial debts from special assets, currency questions, etc. It is closely connected with the "Reparation Chapter." Part X. Economic Clauses.—The first section of this consists of Articles 264-75, which deal with commercial relations, shipping and unfair competition, commercial treaties, etc. Much was at tempted at the conference in the way of promoting international ization of rivers and canals and transport. It was even proposed to make raw materials free of tariffs throughout the world. But in the end the only practical gain was that the Allied Powers secured a "most favoured nation treatment" from Germany for five years, and adjusted various commercial treaties for this purpose.