Note 1 — Chapter I · THE ARMISTICE OF NOVEMBER 11, 1918

Since writing this chapter, my attention has been called to a remarkably clear and frank article contributed by General Tasker H. Bliss, American military member of the Supreme Council, in the September, 1922, “Journal of International Law.” General Bliss quotes copiously from his own notes and correspondence to show that the Allied Premiers had begun to discuss the armistice on October 8, and that the French, British, and Italian military advisers were subject to higher political authority in fixing the terms of the armistice. General Bliss protested on purely military grounds. He believed that whether the Germans consented or not, no armistice should be proposed that did not render the enemy immediately impotent. The Entente Powers, according to General Bliss, allowed the military and naval terms of peace, which could have been communicated to the Germans within a few weeks after the armistice, to be withheld until the final treaty was ready seven months later. The unmilitary character of the armistice and peace negotiations was due to the fact that the Entente Powers were “out for loot,” as the General puts it, and were constantly suspicious of one another. From the beginning there were programs—but no common program!