 In 1926 , Robert C. Binkley and A. C. Mahr of Stanford University , wrote that German accusations of the article assigning war guilt were " ill @-@ founded " and " mistaken " . The article was more " an assumption of liability to pay damages than an admission of war guilt " and compared it with " a man who undertakes to pay all the cost of a motor accident than to the plea of guilty entered by an accused criminal " . They wrote that " it is absurd " to charge the reparation articles of the treaty with any " political meaning " and the legal interpretation " is the only one that can stand " . They concluded that German opposition " is based upon a text which has no legal validity whatsoever , and which Germany never signed at all . " Sidney Fay was the " most outspoken and influential critic " of the article . In 1928 , he concluded that all of Europe shared the blame for the war and that Germany had no intention of launching a general European war in 1914 . 
