patriated irrespective of the completion of their sentence or of the proceedings pending against them.

This stipulation shall not apply to prisoners of war and interned civilians punished for offences committed subsequent to May 1, 1919. During the period pending their repatriation all prisoners of war and interned civilians shall remain subject to the existing regulations, more especially as regards work and discipline.

ARTICLE 219.

Prisoners of war and interned civilians who are awaiting disposal or undergoing sentence for offences other than those against discipline may be detained.

ARTICLE 220.

The German Government undertakes to admit to its territory without distinction all persons liable to repatriation.

Prisoners of war or other German nationals who do not desire to be repatriated may be excluded from repatriation; but the Allied and Associated Governments reserve to themselves the right either to repatriate them or to take them to a neutral country or to allow them to reside in their own territories.

The German Government undertakes not to institute any exceptional proceedings against these persons or their families nor to take any repressive or vexatious measures of any kind whatsoever against them on this account.

ARTICLE 221.

The Allied and Associated Governments reserve the right to make the repatriation of German prisoners of war or German nationals in their hands conditional upon the immediate notification and release by the German Government of any prisoners of war who are nationals of the Allied and Associated Powers and may still be in Germany.

Germany undertakes:

ARTICLE 222.

(1) To give every facility to Commissions to enquire into the cases of those who cannot be traced; to furnish such Commissions with all necessary means of transport; to allow them access to camps, prisons, hospitals and all other places; and to place at their

disposal all documents, whether public or private, which would facilitate their enquiries;

(2) To impose penalties upon any German officials or private persons who have concealed the presence of any nationals of any of the Allied and Associated Powers or have neglected to reveal the presence of any such after it had come to their knowledge.

Note to VI, 222

Germany was credited on reparation account with expenses entailed by these provisions.

ARTICLE 223.

Germany undertakes to restore without delay from the date of the coming into force of the present Treaty all articles, money, securities and documents which have belonged to nationals of the Allied and Associated Powers and which have been retained by the German authorities.

ARTICLE 224.

The High Contracting Parties waive reciprocally all repayment of sums due for the maintenance of prisoners of war in their respective territories.

SECTION II.-Graves.

ARTICLE 225.

The Allied and Associated Governments and the German Government will cause to be respected and maintained the graves of the soldiers and sailors buried in their respective territories.

They agree to recognise any Commission appointed by an Allied or Associated Government for the purpose of identifying, registering, caring for or erecting suitable memorials over the said graves and to facilitate the discharge of its duties.

Furthermore they agree to afford, so far as the provisions of their laws and the requirements of public health allow, every facility for giving effect to requests that the bodies of their soldiers and sailors may be transferred to their own country.

Note to VI, 225

An agreement between France and Great Britain signed at Paris November 26, 1918 (111 British and Foreign State Papers, p. 254) made provision for the care of British war graves. France recog

nized the Imperial War Graves Commission, constituted by royal charter of May 10, 1917, as the sole official body for the care of British military graves. The commission was granted extensive rights with regard to the repatriation of corpses, exhuming bodies from isolated graves, and burying them in cemeteries acquired by arrangement with local French authorities. Provision was made for common cemeteries and for the care of British cemeteries. Commemorative monuments were erected after agreement with the French authorities. An Anglo-French Mixed Committee, 4 honorary and 12 technical members, was constituted by the commission as its active organ. In consideration of the lump sum of one franc, the immovable properties of which the Governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Newfoundland, military units, or private individuals had become possessed by deed or gift with a view to the erection of commemorative monuments were transferred to the French Ministry of National Defense and War by a convention concluded at Paris December 28, 1938 (United Kingdom, Treaty Series No. 24 (1939), Cmd. 6003). The supervision and maintenance of the monuments on the 43 plots mentioned remained with the Imperial War Graves Commission.

The Government of the United States, represented by the chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission, concluded with the French Government on August 29, 1927 an agreement for the acquisition of sites for monuments (Treaty Series 757). The commission was created by act of Congress approved March 4, 1923. The French Government acquired the real estate of which the commission had become proprietor and undertook to acquire other sites which the commission required for the erection of memorials at the expense of the commission. In no case were the debts so incurred to "be susceptible of cancellation against any debt whatever of the French Government towards the Government of the United States".

In the eight American military cemeteries in Europe 30,540 bodies were buried, while a total of 46,214 bodies were returned to the United States.

ARTICLE 226.

The graves of prisoners of war and interned civilians who are nationals of the different belligerent States and have died in captivity shall be properly maintained in accordance with Article 225 of the present Treaty.

The Allied and Associated Governments on the one part and the

German Government on the other part reciprocally undertake also to furnish to each other:

(1) A complete list of those who have died together with all information useful for identification;

(2) All information as to the number and position of the graves

of all those who have been buried without identification.

PART VII.

PENALTIES.

[The vertical rule indicates treaty text.]

ARTICLE 227.

The Allied and Associated Powers publicly arraign William II of Hohenzollern, formerly German Emperor, for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.

A special tribunal will be constituted to try the accused, thereby assuring him the guarantees essential to the right of defence. It will be composed of five judges, one appointed by each of the following Powers: namely, the United States of America, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan.

In its decision the tribunal will be guided by the highest motives of international policy, with a view to vindicating the solemn obligations of international undertakings and the validity of international morality. It will be its duty to fix the punishment which it considers should be imposed.

The Allied and Associated Powers will address a request to the Government of the Netherlands for the surrender to them of the ex-Emperor in order that he may be put on trial.

Notes to Part VII, Articles 227 to 230

The German delegation declined to recognize the competence of the special tribunal to be established for the trial of William II or any legal basis for the prosecution. Germany could not admit that "a German should be brought before a foreign special tribunal

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Notes to Part VII, Articles 227 to 230—Continued

in virtue of a special law enacted by foreign Powers to apply to him alone and framed not on principles of right but on those of politics, and that he should be punished for an act which, when it was committed, was subject to no penalty". The German Government also refused to agree to the demand which the Allies would make upon the Netherlands Government for the surrender of the ex-Emperor. Likewise the German code forbade the surrender of the persons referred to in article 228 (Foreign Relations, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919, vi, 874).

Germany, however, was prepared to see that violations of international law were punished with full severity and to submit the question whether an offense against the laws and customs of war had been committed to an international tribunal of neutrals competent to judge all violations by nationals of all the signatories, Germany to have an equal part in the formation of the tribunal and meting out of punishment to be left to national courts.

The German delegation linked this issue of penalties to the question of responsibility for the war. On May 13 it protested against article 231 (part VIII), stating that "the German people did not will the war and would never have undertaken a war of aggression" and that the delegation did not consider the former German Government as "the party which was solely or chiefly to blame for this war". The Allies were asked to communicate a report made by a commission set up by them to determine the responsibility of the authors of the war (ibid., v, 727). This request was refused by the Allies on May 20 (ibid., p. 742), but somehow the report got into the press, and the German delegation appointed a special committee to consider it. On May 28 the "observations" of this special committee were transmitted to the Allies; the document laid the blame for the war primarily on Tsarist Russia and represented Germany as fighting a war of defense (ibid., v1, 781).

The Allied reply to the German contentions dealt first with the responsibility of Germany for the war and rejected the German argument in toto; "the Allied and Associated Powers are satisfied that the series of events which caused the war was deliberately plotted and executed by those who wielded the supreme power in Vienna, Budapest, and Berlin". The Allies did not stop there, however, but declared that for decades Germany, under the inspiration of Prussia, had been "the champion of force and violence, deception. intrigue and cruelty in international affairs" and had "stood athwart