GAULLE Charles de. Autograph manuscript, [La limitation des armements, novembre ? 1918]; 11 pages in-8. Conference given to his fellow officers at the end of his captivity. The manuscript, untitled, in violet or black ink, contains erasures and corrections. "There is, however, a common feeling among all the belligerent peoples: the horror of the massacres committed. To reduce as far as possible the opportunities for armed conflict between nations, the whole world today wants to see international arbitration grow and become compulsory. To compel ambitions to remain within the bounds of duty and to bring in the perverse, everyone wants to see the effective establishment of what President W. [Wilson] called the Tribunal of Nations. Finally, one resolution dominates, that of putting an end to what the masses consider to be the essential cause of the present war - and which is indeed one of its causes: the madness of unlimited armaments in peacetime". De Gaulle proposes to examine "to what extent and on what basis it is practical and therefore probable to achieve after the war the limitation of armaments by international agreement, assuming that compulsory arbitration of conflicts on the one hand and the Tribunal of Nations on the other are set up and function. We will then study how, once these bases for limitation have been laid, France will be able to build up its military forces and what form they will probably take"... Etc. And he concludes: "Will Germany forgive England? Belgium to Germany, Serbia to Bulgaria, Italy to Austria? Obviously, bending under the weight of sacrifices, threatened with total destruction by each other, threatened by famine and all the social upheavals it would bring, the peoples of Old Europe will end up signing a peace that their statesmen will call a peace of understanding! and which will in fact be a peace of exhaustion. But everyone knows, everyone senses that this peace is nothing but a poor cover thrown over unfulfilled ambitions, hatreds that are more vivid than ever, national anger that has not been extinguished". LNC, I, p.427-432.