Count Hertling, the German Chancellor, made an uncompromising speech in
the Reichstag on Thursday week, in reply to Mr. Lloyd George and President Wilson. Mr. Lloyd George, he said, had changed his tone, but still implied that it was " his duty to sit in judgment on guilty Germany for all sorts of crimes." Germany, in the Chancellor's view, had armed only in self-defense against Great Britain, France, and Russia. Alsace, he said in a travesty of history, was not annexed in 1871 but disannexed, though he omitted to say a word about the wishes of the. Alsatians or about French-speaking Metz. President Wilson had also changed his tone. The Chancellor went on to reply, more or less evasively, to the fourteen points of the President's peace terms. He welcomed the President's proposal as to " the freedom of the seas," but rejected the indispensable proviso which the President attached to it for an international closing of the seas to a Power that had broken international law. He added, in a needlessly provocative phrase, that " it would be important in a high degree for the future freedom of the seas if claims to strongly fortified naval bases on important international shipping routes, such as England maintains at Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, Hong Kong, on the Falkland Islands, and at many other points, were renounced."
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