For Germany _Der Tag_ had gone. For the British
_The Day_ had come; and they hailed it with a roar of British-Lion
cheers.
Most regrettably, the Allies, headed by President Wilson, decided that
the German men-of-war should be interned, not surrendered, when sent to
Scapa Flow. If these ships, after being surrendered to the Allies, had
been put in charge of the British, or any other navy, as "surrenders,"
guards would have been put on board of them and all would have been
well. But interned ships are left to their own crews, no foreign
guards whatever being allowed to live on board. The result of this
mistake, deliberately made against the advice of the British, was that,
on the 21st of June, the Germans, with their usual treachery, opened
the sea-cocks and sank the ships they had surrendered and the Allies
had interned.
A week later, on the 28th of June, 1919, in the renowned historic
palace of Versailles, the Allies and Germany signed the Treaty of Peace
by which they ended the Great War exactly five years after the
assassination of Franz Ferdinand had given the Austro-German empires
the excuse they wanted to begin it.
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