Little by little the secret history of the peace negotiations will leak out. M. Poincaré has just revealed a most important part of it when, in presenting Marshal Foch to the Academy, he indicated what were the soldier's ideas of a reasonable guarantee for the future, namely, the forbidding to Germany of all territory west of the Rhine. Such a splendid line of demarcation, presenting so difficult a military obstade, would Jnaturally make an instant appeal to the strategist in Marshal Foch, and would constitute a safeguard to France greater ant more permanent than anything she has obtained out of the peace treaty. The objection to it was the possibility, almost certainty, of creating another Alsace out of the Rhine Province, a factor which was bound to outweigh purely military considerations in the minds of the peace delegates. It is true that the Rhine Province has shown a few indications of desiring to be an independent republic of itself (which would meet the case put forward by Marshal Foch), but the strong probability is that this state of mind is due to Germany's debt-burdened condition and a hope of shifting some of that weight off its own shoulders. Meantime the alarmists worry about Germany's military strength, secret army and the like. But not'the best military minds in France. Opinion in Germany is thought to be too much divided and likely to remain so for some time.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.