the economic and financial experts, was that
an exact sum of money be levied on the
Germans so that all nations should know what
the world financial problem really was: but
neither Clemenceau nor Lloyd George would
consent to this, lest the unexpectedly limited
amount should cause explosions in their own
countries.

Day after day they argued and disputed
and there was nothing to report but talk. It
was well understood that Wilson was standing
against some of these French claims; as he
stood afterward against extreme Italian claims,
as he had stood before against certain British
colonial claims: and attacks in the French
press became more pointed and bitter. The
Echo de Paris, for example, even charged a
conspiracy between America and Great Bri-
tain to keep France from getting her just
rights in order that an Anglo-Saxon entente
might dominate the world commercially.

The President was attacked, indeed, by
both extremes of opinion; not only by the
reactionaries who wanted to divide the spoils
of war and who were against any league of
nations whatsoever, but by the extreme radi-
cals who wanted to use the President in ad-

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