provisions of the Treaty of Versailles which called for the public indictment of the former German emperor William II before a special Allied tribunal and the extradition of other alleged war criminals to the Allies (see also the Leipzig war crimes trials). Like the others, the third subcommittee had to contend with authorities who feared that a wealth of secret details might come to light and cause the declining Allied pressure for the extradition of war criminals to rise again. The question of the violation of Belgian neutrality was dragged out and ultimately not brought to a resolution. Most committee members interpreted unrestricted submarine warfare, which violated prize laws for captured ships, as a legitimate response to the blockade of Germany by England in violation of international law. They also saw the forced transfer of Belgian workers to Germany as covered by the Hague Land Warfare Regulations, while they found clear violations of international law in the similar deportation German residents of Alsace–Lorraine to France. In its assessment of the destruction caused by the German Army during its withdrawal from France and Belgium, the parliamentarians concluded that they were measures taken from a purely military point of view and were covered by Article 23 of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations. The conclusion was reached in spite of the fact that the committee had received an expert opinion prepared by the Foreign Office stating that such destruction "was entirely senseless and futile". Fourth subcommittee: causes of defeat Beginning in November 1920, the fourth subcommittee worked on the questions of the origin, execution, and collapse of the German spring offensive of 1918, the grievances in the army, and the economic, social and moral grievances in the homeland and their repercussions on the army and navy. A month later, the work program was expanded to include the question of the subversive effect of domestic political events and propagandistic influences, both revolutionary and annexationist. Next to the second subcommittee, the fourth attracted the most public attention. It had the most difficult task and could have exposed the stab-in-the-back myth as self-interested propaganda, but there too the Weimar government coalition tried to maneuver between a real investigation and preventing admissions of guilt towards former opponents. Military authorities proved to be even more reluctant to release files than the Foreign Office. They made no secret of the fact that they opposed the parliamentary inquiry as a