The delegates of the smaller belligerent nations were not permitted to examine the actual text of the document before it was seen by their defeated adversaries.

Nations, which had fought valiantly and suffered agonies during the war, were treated with no more consideration than their enemies so far as knowledge of the exact terms of peace were concerned.

The arguments, which could be urged on the ground of the practical necessity of a small group dealing with the questions and determining the settlements, seem insufficient to justify the application of the rule of secrecy to the delegates who sat in the Conference on the Preliminaries of Peace.

It is not too severe to say that it outraged the equal rights of independent and sovereign states and under less critical conditions would have been resented as an insult by the plenipotentiaries of the lesser nations.

Even within the delegations of the Great Powers there were indignant murmurings against this indefensible and unheard-of treatment of allies.