returned to Germany, but their assignment as possessions, or in trusteeship, together with the fashion in which they shall be administered in the interests of their inhabitants and of the world generally, are matters for future decisions.
These are the indisputable conditions of peace which must be accepted in the second stage of the negotiations.
I have dealt with the first two stages as logically separate and successive. In actual fact agreement on them might be coincident in time. In any event, acceptance of the indisputable conditions would be made before the guarantees required under the terms of surrender or of armistice had become accomplished facts.
The conclusion of the first two stages, whether concurrent or consecutive, will be the end of dictation. They form the preliminary to co-operation. They will be an earnest of a complete break with the past on the part of Germany. They will go far to satisfy the natural desire of those who demand that the guilty should be punished, and yet I believe that they contain nothing that is not imperative for a just and lasting peace. And I hope that their imposition and acceptance will, in the subsequent stages, make it possible to take advantage, for the benefit of the world, of those powers of discipline and organisation which Germany has perverted to the great harm of the world.
III
