When all has been said, however, though we do not
doubt the intention of the writers, we admit that the wording of the whole paragraph is lamentably ambiguous. The words " by land, by sea, and from the air" are in themselves a kind of con- traction of the wide and general sense which we see in the whole passage. Is it not amazing that in such an important and critical question as that of restoration, reparation, compensation, indemnity, or whatever we choose to call it, any loophole should have been left for mleundemtanding ? We imagine that as Mr. Wilson was in Washington when the negotiations took plane, a kind of compromise was patched up by cable, and that the result is what we ace. Wb are firm in our belief; however, that the wide serum 'under which it is legitimate-to- °Joint-from Germany the cost of the war was what the authors of the reservation intended. As though to support us in that view, both Mr. Lloyd George and M. Clenienceau -have of course com- mitted.themselves emphatically to that demand. Do our correspondents attach no weight to this fact, or do they take the purely cynical view that the British Prime Minister is so little bound by pledges that even in this care he is altogether dis- regarding his undertakings
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