Paris, Jan. li.
M. Clemenceau has shaken hands with Herr von Lersner, and peace once more prevails with Germany. In other words, the ratifications of the treaty were exchanged yesterday in the Salon de \Hor-loge at the Ministry of: Foreign Affairs.
The ceremony was brief and not very impressive. One could have wished, too, that Nature could have showed herself to be in a responsive mood, but she greeted the occasion with lowering skies, and to-day she has given us the worst gale we have had for years, thus showing us very frankly what contempt she has for our puny little arrangements.
It was very different when the treaty "was signed at Versailles more than months ago, amid brilliant sunshine and an atmosphere of cheerfulness for everybody except the Germans. At that time the idea of peace was exhilarating. The defects of the treaty were overshadowed, and there was hope of success for the great effort to bring about something like a general reconciliation. The intervening period has seen the great apostle of that effort tied hand and foot by the elect of his own people, to such an extent that 1 had no representative at yesterday's ceremony.
At the suggestion, it is said, of Lloyd George, some attempt was made to give outward impres-sivaness to an event which might otherwise have attracted very little attention, so inappreciable is the transition from a state of war that was no longer war to a. state of peace that looks very much like a continuation of the struggle.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.