§ I come again to the Colonies. I am running rapidly through the points which have-been challenged as indicating undue harshness to Germany. In some of the Colonies-there is most overwhelming evidence that Germany had cruelly ill-treated the natives. If, in the face of that evidence, we had restored those Colonies to Germany—especially having regard to the part which the natives have taken in their own liberation—and thus given Germany an opportunity of effecting reprisals, it would have been a base betrayal. And it is not merely the treatment of the natives. Take the other use which Germany made of her Colonies. South-West Africa she? used as a means of stirring up sedition and rebellion against the South African Colonies. The other Colonies she used as a base for preying upon the commerce of all countries in those seas. It would have been folly on our part to have restored those Colonies to Germany. We should under those conditions have widened the area of injustice in the world—it is already wide enough—and given renewed opportunities to Germany for possible future-mischief.