The High Cost of Vengeance

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FOLLOWING WORLD WAR I FRANCE AND BRITAIN REFUSED TO LISTEN to the statesmen who said that you can have peace or vengeance, not both. They broke their armistice pledge to Germany that peace would be made on the basis of President Wilson's Fourteen Points and "the principles of settlement enunciated" by the American President. They continued the starvation blockade of Germany for six months after the Armistice, in order to force the German democrats who had taken over the government to sign a dictated peace. Having promised a peace without annexations or indemnities, they deprived Germany of territory and imposed a crushing reparations burden on the newly established Weimar Republic. Having promised general disarmament they disarmed Germany without disarming themselves. The victors refused even to discuss the terms of peace with the vanquished who had surrendered on stated conditions which were not fulfilled, and in general dis- credited democracy in German eyes by associating it with broken pledges, national humiliation, and economic distress.