The title of this part of the book suggests an optimism and positive attitude in no way justified by its subject matter or content. The chapters here deal with two issues whose outcomes illuminate the failure of European reconstruction at Versailles and the economic and financial disasters of the two miserable decades between the smoke and mirrors surrounding the peace settlement and the explosive and shattering termination marked by the German invasion of Poland. The first of these issues is the territorial settlement; the second is the economic and financial settlement. Both were horrendous failures by any standard one wishes to employ and whatever position one takes on the historical debates surrounding them. At the heart of these debates has been the question of whether the arrangements made were too hard or too easy on Germany. Although most historians would agree that the terms were too hard in relation to the will and mechanisms available to enforce them and too easy to prevent a second German grasp for world power, the quarrel over what might have been done often tends to skirt the overdetermined nature of what actually happened at Versailles.