EUROPE SINCE 1918

EUROPE SINCE 1918

BY
HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS
Author of “The New Map of Europe,” “An Introduction to World Politics,” etc.

THE CENTURY CO.
New York and London

Copyright, 1923, by
The Century Co.

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

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The world of 1914, as we see it now, reminds us of Humpty Dumpty. Having climbed upon its wall with difficulty, to keep from being involved in every petty quarrel between nations and coalitions, the world had somehow managed to sit there for a hundred years. The status quo was revised here and there occasionally by violence. But the violence did not set back the hands of the clock, defy economic laws, or, with the exception of Alsace-Lorraine, make for international political instability. The developments of the nineteenth century were a logical growth, the result of the working out of economic laws, which means that thoughtful men and strong men led virile national groups successfully because they knew how to adapt their foreign policies to, and shape them by, changing political, economic, and social world conditions.

None was satisfied with Humpty Dumpty, but, for fear of the consequences, all bolstered him up and steadied him whenever he showed signs of toppling. When he did fall, the first dismay gave way to rejoicing. Now was our chance to make him over again into what we wanted him to be.

viii We forgot our nursery-rime. A new world order became our battle-cry. The Central Empires stood for the old order; the Entente Allies were determined to make a clean sweep of the international conditions that caused wars. Glibly repeated from mouth to mouth “A war to end war” was the phrase that appealed to our imagination. How? By emancipating subject races, by resurrecting submerged nations, by guaranteeing collectively the independence of weak states and the sanctity of treaties and international law.

We forgot our nursery-rime, I say. Some of us had no intention of actually letting Humpty Dumpty fall to pieces, and all of us thought we could put him together again according to our own plan and in a way that would suit us. But when we entered the fray idealistic principles and formulæ became weapons and not goals. Before November 11, 1918, we used our principles solely to break down the morale of our enemies; and since the defeat of Germany instead of making peace we have continued to juggle with our ideals as we did in war-time. So the world is still actually at war. The treaties forced upon the vanquished enemies have not been taken seriously. One of them has already come up for drastic revision and the others are not being fully enforced.

In justification of their unwillingness to apply in making peace the principles they had solemnlyix pledged themselves to use as the basis of the treaties, Entente statesmen had no grounds for claiming either (a) that the American President and his nation, late comers in the war, wrongly interpreted and formulated the Entente war aims, or (b) that the fulfilment of their promises was contingent upon American coöperation. Self-determination, the resurrection of subject nations, the rectification of frontiers to satisfy irredentist aspirations, may have been doctrines promulgated in a small measure as a gallery appeal to public opinion at home and abroad; but the main reason was to break down the internal military unity of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey. These doctrines were not inspired by President Wilson or other American ideologues, nor were they proclaimed with the idea that the United States would help to carry them out.

It was not intended that they should be carried out. But the new forces set loose were too strong to control. Peoples all over the world clamored for rights and privileges that it was the purpose to grant only to peoples that had been subject to the vanquished powers. To this cause of confusion, unrest, conspiracy, and open rebellion, were added the falling out of the victors over the spoils of war and the determination of France and some of the smaller nations to apply the law of retaliation to their now defenseless oppressors.

x These are the three reasons why Europe since 1918 has not found peace. The League of Nations is impotent, with or without the United States as a member, to restore Europe to peace until the three Furies—Vanity, Greed, and Revenge—cease raging.

After the World War the movement in the United States to induce the American people to underwrite the Paris peace settlement did not succeed. The overwhelming rejection of their panacea for the ills of the world did not discourage the supporters of the Versailles Covenant. After four years they are returning to the campaign for American participation in the Versailles League. Since they cannot disguise the seriousness of conditions in Europe as the fourth year of the functioning of the League of Nations draws to a close, the earnest League propagandists, to get away from the remorseless logic of “By their fruits ye shall know them,” now assert that Europe’s troubles are our fault. We refused to ratify the treaty and enter the League of Nations; ergo, all these things have happened.

The writer, an observer and student of European affairs for fifteen years, has never had an ax to grind or theories and national causes to advance and champion. In the Near East during the years leading up to the World War, in Paris during the World War and the Peace Conference, and following the aftermath of the warxi since the treaties were signed, his sole ambition has been to record what he has observed. He is not pro-anything. He feels, as he did when he wrote “The New Map of Europe” in 1914, “The New Map of Africa” in 1916, and “The New Map of Asia” in 1919, that a host of people are seeking an unbiased presentation of contemporary events, so that sentimentality will not obscure common sense in forming their opinion on the important problem of America’s place in the world and America’s duty toward the world. We must know how things actually are in order that we may help effectively to make them what they ought to be.

Herbert Adams Gibbons.

Princeton, September, 1923.

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3

CHAPTER I
THE ARMISTICE OF NOVEMBER 11, 1918

October, 1918, brought a sweeping and unexpected change in the fortunes of Germany. In London and Paris it was not believed that the crash would come so soon. British and French political and journalistic circles were discussing the all-absorbing subject of Foch’s forward movement on the western front. During the war, already lasting over four years, there had been so little of military victories to record and comment upon that none seemed to be thinking of the inevitable day of Germany’s collapse. The armistices with Bulgaria, Turkey, and Austria-Hungary were regarded as military agreements, and the newspapers were silent about post-armistice events in southeastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

Public opinion, therefore, was unprepared for Germany’s direct and definite demand for an armistice4 based upon the acceptance by all belligerents of President Wilson’s peace program.

The speech of President Wilson at the opening of the Fourth Liberty Loan Campaign on September 27 was made the day after the collapse of Bulgaria. The superiority of numbers had already begun to tell against Germany on the western front. The President of the United States weighed fully every word uttered on that occasion. It was clear that the enemies of Germany had reached no understanding as to their attitude in case Germany should express the willingness to lay down her arms and confess that she was beaten. When, two days later, Bulgaria signed an armistice, and the Germans knew they could no longer hope for a drawn battle, it was excellent strategy to make the request for peace in the form of a direct appeal to President Wilson in which the Imperial German Government expressed its willingness to make peace “on the basis of President Wilson’s Fourteen Points and subsequent discourses, notably that of September 27.”

When the news of this appeal was published in Paris, a French statesman who had been at the head of the Government at one time during the war said to me: “France is as unprepared for peace as she was for war. In 1914 we had no definite understanding with any other nation than5 Russia. You remember how nervous we were about England’s attitude during those awful first three days. In 1918, with the military victory ours, we and our numerous allies have no terms of peace, agreed upon in common by us all, to impose upon our enemies. It looks as if we shall soon have power to dictate peace, but we are not ready to state to the enemy—and to our own people, for that matter—what terms we propose to dictate. Nor is there any overwhelming public sentiment to guide us. The speeches of your Wilson have had a splendid effect in demoralizing the Germans. For this reason, it would have been folly for any French or British statesman to differ publicly with Mr. Wilson. We must not give German statesmen and generals ammunition to use in fighting the demoralization that is so evident on their front as well as in their rear. On the other hand, because of this silence, we are in danger of being stampeded into agreeing to accept Mr. Wilson’s ideas of peace, which are altogether ridiculous.”

Unpreparedness for peace was not due to lack of foresight on the part of Entente statesmen. Up to the end, Germany was a redoubtable enemy who hoped for a military stalemate through lack of harmony among the members of the coalition. She knew that the nations banded against her had only one common interest, her defeat. The Entente6 Powers themselves realized that they were not going to think alike about terms of peace, as they were interested in the war in varying degrees and for different reasons. So they wisely stuck by the old adage, “First catch your hare!” In order to catch the hare, the enemies of Germany had been going the limit in abandonment of prejudices, sacrifice of pride, change of national habits, and repression of national instincts. Mutual forbearance was taxed to the uttermost in keeping up and coördinating the military effort. Loans were arranged without discussion as to interest charges and method of amortization. The coalition would not have stood the additional test of having to try to agree upon a common peace policy.

The demand for the armistice came too soon after the tide had turned. With the danger of weakening or disrupting military effort by frictions and misunderstanding scarcely behind them, the members of the Supreme Council at Versailles were suddenly confronted with the problem of making an armistice that contained definite obligations as to the general tenor of the peace settlement. The Allies had had no time to work out a common program to present to the conquered foes. The embarrassment at Versailles was great. Every one was willing to end the war immediately to save further bloodshed and expense.7 But none was willing to connect the question of an armistice with that of peace. And yet the inquiry in Germany’s demand for an armistice could not be ignored!

The Turkish and Bulgarian armistices had been imposed without involving the principles of the peace settlement. They were concluded without the participation of the United States. But in the Austro-Hungarian and German armistices we entered directly. Numerous questions arose which compromised the interests or admitted the pretensions of each of the Allies. How make an armistice with Austria-Hungary without taking into consideration Italia Irredenta and the conflicting aspirations of the nations we had promised to free from the Hapsburg yoke? How make an armistice with Germany without defining our attitude toward British naval and colonial ambitions and French contentions as to adequate guarantees and reparations?

These considerations put the American delegates at Versailles in an unenviable and delicate position. The general lines of American policy were already announced. When we entered the war, President Wilson drew a distinction between the German Government and the German people, a distinction heartily approved at the time by the major portion of the American press and by American public opinion. In official speeches8 and official notes, specific statements had been made, reiterated, and elaborated concerning the objects for which we were fighting and the principles we intended to follow in reëstablishing peace. It could not be argued that new conditions had arisen to change our attitude. The United States came into the war a long time after its issues were clearly defined. From the beginning we had recognized that Germany and Austria-Hungary were the aggressors. We were aware of their violations of international law, of their cruelties on land and sea, of the martyrdom imposed by them upon Belgium, Northern France, and Serbia. We knew all about the destruction wrought by their armies, airplanes, and submarines. We had been stirred with indignation by the Armenian massacres. We knew their ideas of peace, had they been victorious. For the treaties of Bucharest and Brest-Litovsk had been signed and published.

No argument or explanation that has been brought to bear to justify the treaties imposed upon our enemies at Paris is built upon facts that have come to light since the armistice. The responsibility of Germany and the heinousness of her crimes were known and felt by the members of the Supreme Council at Versailles, to whom President Wilson referred Germany’s request for an armistice. To the Supreme Council Mr. Wilson9 left the decision. Were the Entente Powers willing to grant Germany an armistice with the understanding that after she had rendered herself defenseless peace would be concluded “on the basis of the Fourteen Points and President Wilson’s subsequent discourses, notably that of September 27, 1918”? It was not the American Government that had suggested this understanding as to the nature of the peace. Nor did the American Government attempt to influence the decision of the Supreme Council. Marshal Foch and his advisers had it in their power to reject the German plea unconditionally and continue the war. Of all the armies in the field that of the United States was the least willing to quit. Or the Supreme Council could have declared openly its inability to agree upon an eventual peace treaty along Wilsonian lines. This need not have been done baldly. Diplomatic formulæ could have been found to make the rejection noncommittal, thus avoiding a frank declaration of disagreement with American ideals.

Colonel House and General Bliss, enjoying the confidence of President Wilson, were in a position to point out to their colleagues what they all knew, that during eighteen months the will and energy of a hundred million Americans had been concentrated upon bringing Germany to her knees, and that it was because of the American10 effort that Germany was suing for peace. The events of October, 1918, were not a miracle. They were not due to an unexpected turn in the fortunes of battle. For until the American armies in France had passed the million mark Germany was able to help her allies and at the same time to hold the position she had established in France and Belgium in 1914. Were not the defection of Bulgaria, Turkey, and Austria-Hungary and the retreat of the German army from France and Belgium the result primarily of the uninterrupted growth of the American Expeditionary Force? Was it not also true that President Wilson had simply taken Entente statesmen at their word, relying upon the sincerity of their own definition of their objects in the war, when he elaborated his Fourteen Points? What was more natural, then, than that the German demand for an armistice should come through Washington and be coupled with the condition that peace be made in conformity with the avowed common ideals of the victors?

But our delegates at Versailles showed admirable tact and diplomatic correctness. It was true that American intervention had turned the scales in favor of the Entente. But it was equally true that our associates had born the brunt of the battle for three years without our military aid, holding the Central Empires in check by sacrificing the11 best of their blood. Countries invaded and ravaged, civilian population maltreated, cities and factories and mines destroyed, debts beyond belief—all this had been suffered to make possible the common victory. The popular resentment against Germany was as great in the United States as in Europe. We were holding no brief for Germany. If the Supreme Council should be of the opinion that it would be best to continue the war and go to Berlin, the United States would not stand in the way. It was intimated that we were willing to do our part. No pressure of any kind, direct or indirect, was exercised by the American Government or its representatives at Versailles to induce the Entente Powers to grant Germany’s plea.

The accusations that have since been freely made to the effect that the United States provoked and encouraged the German demand for an armistice and insisted that the Wilsonian program be adopted as a basis of the Paris settlement in the pre-armistice negotiations are unsupported by any evidence. Volumes have been written to defend or explain the armistice with Germany. It is popularly regretted as premature and as due to a mistaken idealism inspired by Americans. The factors in the decision of the Supreme Council are not obscure. Italy did not want the war to go on any longer; her objectives had been12 gained by the antecedent armistice of November 3 with Austria-Hungary, and her statesmen were bent upon using all their troops to occupy “unredeemed Italy” and the Dalmatian islands and coast. Great Britain and France were more exhausted, materially and morally, than they cared to admit. If Germany accepted the naval and military clauses of the armistice they had in mind to propose, it would be foolish to continue to exhaust themselves.

Given the attitude of Italy, with which it was impossible to find fault, British and French statesmen and generals were virtually unanimous in believing that, if they could get what they wanted by the terms of the armistice, carrying the war into Germany would be a game not worth the candle. For they were not at all sure that a speedy military victory was possible. Another winter of fighting would involve tremendous sacrifices. Discontent in the rear had to be reckoned with. And, above all, it might happen that the final act in the great drama would find the American army holding the center of the stage. This would be disastrous to French and British prestige and would give President Wilson the upper hand in formulating the peace treaties. As one eminent Englishman put it when I was talking over the situation with him the first week13 of November: “There is that parable about the laborers in the vineyard. We know well enough that Berlin ought to be the end of the day. But if we work till nightfall, you, who came in at the eleventh hour, would get the same reward as the rest of us—perhaps all the pennies!”1

The pre-armistice agreement was carefully considered. There was nothing hasty about the action of the Supreme Council. The British and French knew just what they were doing. The British excluded Mr. Wilson’s point on the freedom of the seas. This we agreed to. The French and Belgians insisted upon a definition of the stipulation that “the invaded territories14 must be restored as well as evacuated and freed.”

On November 5, 1918, the Entente Powers sent to Washington the following message:

The Allied Governments have given careful consideration to the correspondence which has passed between the President of the United States and the German Government.

Subject to the qualifications which follow, they declare their willingness to make peace with the Government of Germany on the terms of peace laid down in the President’s Address to Congress of January 8, 1918, and the principles of settlement enunciated in his subsequent Addresses. They must point out, however, that Clause 2, relating to what is usually described as the freedom of the seas, is open to various interpretations, some of which they could not accept. They must, therefore, reserve to themselves complete freedom on this subject when they enter the Peace Conference.

Further, in the conditions of peace laid down in his Address to Congress of January 8, 1918, the President declared that the invaded territories must be restored as well as evacuated and freed, and the Allied Governments feel that no doubt ought to be allowed to exist as to what this provision implies. By it they understand that compensation will be made by Germany for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies, and their property, by the aggression of Germany by land, by sea, and from the air.

This answer was immediately communicated to Germany by the United States. In an accompanying note, Mr. Lansing said:

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I advised you that the President had transmitted his correspondence with the German authorities to the Governments with which the Government of the United States is associated as a belligerent, with the suggestion that, if those Governments were disposed to effect peace upon the terms and principles indicated, their military advisers and the military advisers of the United States be asked to submit to the Governments associated against Germany the necessary terms of such an armistice as would fully protect the interest of the peoples involved, and ensure to the associated Governments the unrestricted power to safeguard and enforce the details of the peace to which the German Government had agreed, provided they deemed such an armistice possible from the military point of view.

I am instructed by the President to say that he is in agreement with the interpretation set forth in the last paragraph of the memorandum above quoted.

I am further instructed by the President to request you [he was writing to the Swiss Minister at Washington through whom the negotiations were carried on] to notify the German Government that Marshal Foch has been authorized by the Government of the United States and the Allied Governments to receive properly accredited representatives of the German Government, and to communicate to them the terms of an armistice.

On November 6 an armistice commission was appointed by Germany, which received the Allied military conditions at the Allied General Headquarters on November 8. Seventy-two hours were given for acceptance or rejection. At 5 A. M. on November 11 the armistice that ended16 the World War was signed at Rethondes in the Forest of Compiègne.

The armistice provided for the cessation of hostilities at eleven o’clock on the day of signature; the evacuation of Belgium, northern France, Luxemburg, and Alsace-Lorraine in fifteen days; repatriation of civilian and military prisoners; abandonment of a large quantity of artillery and airplanes; evacuation of the left bank of the Rhine, with three bridge-heads on the right bank, within a month; evacuation of the countries occupied in eastern and southeastern Europe; annulment of the treaties of Bucharest and Brest-Litovsk; evacuation of German forces in East Africa; reparation of damages; restitution of money and securities taken from Belgium; surrender of Russian and Rumanian gold to the Allies; delivery of all submarines and most of the German Navy in Allied ports; release of Russian war-ships and all merchant-ships; and cancellation of restrictions placed upon neutral shipping and trade by the German Government and private German firms. Two additional stipulations of prime importance in bringing pressure to bear upon Germany were that the blockade of Germany be maintained throughout the Peace Conference and that there be no reciprocity in the liberation of prisoners of war.

The acceptance of the armistice terminated the17 hostilities and prevented the invasion of Germany. It left Germany defenseless. Under no circumstances would she be able to renew the war. For the sake of avoiding worse evils the German Government signed these humiliating conditions. On the other hand, the Germans felt that they gained the assurance of a peace such as President Wilson had outlined, in which, to use the President’s own words, “the impartial justice meted out must involve no discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to whom we do not wish to be just: it must be a justice that plays no favorites and knows no standard but the equal rights of the several peoples concerned.”

What the Germans failed to grasp was the fact that the long and bitter struggle had drawn their enemies down to their level, and that their own faithlessness was going to be met by a desire for revenge on the part of those who had originally drawn the sword in the defense of the pledged word among nations.

18

When the wild joy of the armistice celebration had spent itself, public opinion in the victorious countries reacted against the terms of the armistice, against the very fact that an armistice had been signed. It was recognized that there had been no clean-cut, unquestioned military victory, such as generally decides the fortunes of a war. The enemy’s front was unbroken: he was still on the soil of France and had not been driven out of Belgium. The armistice conditions provided for a gradual withdrawal from France, Belgium, and Alsace-Lorraine, and the gradual occupation by the victors of the Rhine provinces and bridge-heads. The German army retired with artillery and arms and other war material, and the method of advance of the victors deprived the armies of appearing dramatically as liberators and conquerors. And then there were too many victors! The details of the advance were as meticulously arranged among allies as between the allies and the enemy.

19 It was felt that Germany, after four years of being the top dog, had suddenly managed to “get out from under” before the storm broke that would give her army and her people a taste of the medicine they had been administering in big doses ever since 1914. Consequently there was a determination that crying “Kamerad!” was not going to enable Germany to avoid the disagreeable consequences of losing the war. There was far more hatred, bitterness, resentment, than there would have been had the Allied armies beaten the Germans in the field, chased them back to their own country, and secured an unconditional surrender on German soil. The very fact of so much hatred after the armistice indicated that the military superiority of the victors had not been sufficiently demonstrated. For hatred is born of fear and nourished by fear. After a fight to the finish, the sane man with normal instincts simply cannot hate. If he knows that he has knocked out his opponent, his natural instinct is to extend a hand good-naturedly to help the other fellow to his feet. No matter what the opponent may have done, he is considered to have paid the penalty by the punishment he received in the losing fight.

The trouble with the world in November, 1918, was that there had been no knock-out. More than that, Germany had been worsted by a coalition20 which was doomed to disruption after the fighting was over, unless all its members should be willing to continue to grant to one another equal opportunities and privileges and assume for one another equal burdens and responsibilities, just as they had done during the war.

When the clamor arose to make Germany pay, Entente statesmen rode with the tide of hysterical indignation instead of trying to stem it. They did not point out from the beginning, as they should have done, that Germany had not made an unconditional surrender, throwing herself upon the mercy of her conquerors. However ignoble the motive that prompted it, her submission had been contingent upon the definite promise that a certain kind of peace, very clearly defined, would be made with her. In return for the pre-armistice concessions, the Allies had transformed suddenly a potential into an actual victory without having to shed further blood for the liberation of France and Belgium or to wrest Alsace-Lorraine from Germany. When Germany threw up the sponge, allowed portions of her territory to be occupied, surrendered most of her naval and much of her military equipment, and agreed to release prisoners of war without reciprocity, she thought that she was letting the victors discount their future military triumph by waiving their right to a victors’ peace. Wilsonian ideas had spread21 all over Germany and had helped to break down the morale of the army.

The world was so weary of war that strong men in Allied countries, men with vision and a sense of honor, might have been able to carry public opinion with them in favor of a durable world peace. But there were no such men in Europe in positions of authority, and by going personally to the Peace Conference President Wilson sacrificed the prestige and influence which, exercised from afar, might have enabled him to become and remain master of the situation.

Two months elapsed between the armistice and the opening of peace negotiations. During that time the victorious powers worked out the details of the military occupation of German territory. The French took over Alsace-Lorraine as an integral part of France, restoring, so far as the Germans and the outside world were concerned, the status quo of 1870. The victors had agreed to allow France a free hand in reannexing her “lost provinces.” What problems France had to face were to be solved as a purely internal French affair, and so the French went ahead to change the régime without waiting for a treaty of peace. The details of the military occupation of German territory, with the three bridge-heads on the right bank of the Rhine, were worked out22 among British and French and Americans, who established their headquarters respectively at Cologne, Mainz, and Coblenz. The German Government had no part in arranging for the Allied occupation. It was a military affair, and all orders were given directly to the local authorities in each of the zones.

Allied prisoners of war were released. The Germans surrendered their fleet. Allied commissions, to watch over the fulfilment of the armistice terms, were sent to all the defeated countries. For general questions affecting Germany, an Armistice Commission was created, with headquarters at Spa in Belgium.

Allied statesmen began to study the question of securing the confidence of the electorates and parliaments of their respective countries, without which they would be unable to act as plenipotentiaries. This was an essential consideration; for the executive power in Europe, unlike that of the United States, has no fixed tenure of office and is always dependent upon a parliamentary vote of confidence. In the two months between the armistice and the conference, the statesmen of the European powers, large and small, had to secure a parliamentary mandate, approving their general policy at the approaching conference.

As soon as the military terms of the armistice were fulfilled, so that the defeated peoples were23 no longer in a position to renew the war, an uncompromising attitude was adopted toward the Germans and their allies. The pre-armistice agreement was ignored. The five enemy states were told that they would have no part in the Peace Conference. The victors were to decide upon the terms of the treaties, which would then be communicated to the vanquished. In the meantime the food blockade was to be maintained and enemy prisoners of war held. The only dealings between the governments of the victors and of the vanquished were in connection with the measures decided upon to carry out the conditions of the armistices. The peace negotiations were to take the form simply of adjusting and harmonizing the conflicting ideas and ambitions and programs of the victorious powers, and were to be no concern of the defeated nations. Our enemies were regarded as criminals, to be arraigned and sentenced by men acting simultaneously as judges, jurors, prosecutors, and jailers. Right to counsel and right of appeal were alike denied.

Austrians and Hungarians were in a different situation from that of Germans, Bulgarians, and Turks. The two countries of the Dual Monarchy, in which they had been the dominant peoples, were separated at the time of the armistice. Far-reaching decisions had already been made before24 the Peace Conference met. The treaties dealing with the future of the Hapsburg dominions would take into account faits accomplis: (1) the political separation of Austria and Hungary; (2) the annexation to Italy of regions defined in the secret Treaty of London of 1915; (3) the resurrection of Poland; (4) the creation of Czechoslovakia; (5) the aggrandizement of Serbia and Rumania. De facto recognition of independence was granted to Poland and Czechoslovakia, and also to the Hedjaz, detached from the Ottoman Empire. These three new states, whose belligerency had been recognized as a war measure before the end of hostilities, although boundaries were not defined, were invited to participate in the Peace Conference.

The organization of the conference was undertaken by the four Entente Powers, France, Great Britain, Japan, and Italy (who had signed the Pact of London, obligating themselves not to make a separate peace), in agreement with the United States. It was decided to make a distinction between the “powers with general interests” and the “powers with particular interests.” The former were the United States, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan; and the latter were Belgium, Brazil, the British Dominions and India, China, Cuba, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Hedjaz, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, Poland,25 Portugal, Rumania, Serbia, Siam, and Czechoslovakia. The great powers were to have five delegates; Belgium, Brazil, and Serbia, three; China, Greece, Hedjaz, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Siam, and Czechoslovakia, two; Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, and Panama, one; while the British Dominions and India were allowed two delegates, with the exception of New Zealand, which was to have one. Four powers that had broken off diplomatic relations with Germany, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Uruguay, were granted one delegate each “in the sittings at which questions concerning them are discussed.” Provision was made for the possibility of admitting Montenegro, but the question of Russia was left to be determined by the conference.

The most important of the preliminary measures was the one which proposed to limit the decision upon the matters of settlement to a central commission, on which the “five powers with general interests” were alone represented. The various details were to be studied by commissions of fifteen, two members each for the great powers and five members representing all the other powers together, which were to report to the central commission. The Supreme War Council at Versailles, under Marshal Foch, was to continue to meet during the Peace Conference to deal26 with the enforcement of the armistices and with military problems concerning the enemy powers and the regions whose status the Peace Conference was to settle.

There was something to be said both for the exclusion of enemy powers from the Peace Conference and for the exclusion of the “powers with particular interests” from the central commission. The victors of the World War realized only too well that they would have great difficulty in reconciling their own ambitions and in agreeing upon any common program of peace, and they did not purpose to have Germany repeating the rôle of France in the Conference of Vienna a hundred years earlier. With delegates from thirty countries, some of which were parts of the British Empire and other states that had only a technical right to be represented, it was reasonable to expect that the organizers of the conference would adopt regulations to make it a feasible working body.

Signs were not lacking to indicate that it was going to be hard enough for the great powers to agree upon peace terms, even if they should be free from the influence of enemy intrigues pitting one against another and from being constantly hampered and blocked by the exaggerated and rival claims of the smaller states, especially those created or greatly enlarged by the war.27 And Paris, which had suffered so greatly for more than four years under the constant menace of German bombardments (and even of capture), was a poor place to hold a conference called together to establish a durable world peace. The atmosphere was surcharged with bitterness and prejudices. The burnt child continued to dread the fire after the fire had been extinguished. French internal politics centered in Paris, which was also the home of France’s economic interests and of the French army.

Before the conference met, no effort had been made to create a judicial attitude toward the great problems of peace. Posters on the walls as well as the newspapers kept the French keyed up to a degree of bitterness, tinged with apprehension, that made logical and constructive thinking impossible. This state of mind was natural, when one considers what the French had gone through and that complete victory over Germany came as a miracle to the hard-pressed French and their allies. But it was not conducive to the triumph of what Mr. Wilson called the American Government’s “interpretation of its own duty with regard to peace: First, the impartial justice meted out must involve no discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to whom we do not wish to be just. It must be a justice that plays no favorites and knows no28 standards but the equal rights of the several peoples concerned.”

The demands of France against Germany and her allies had been outlined in the first year of the war as follows: (1) punishment of those responsible for the war; (2) reparation for losses during the war; (3) guaranties against future aggression on the part of Germany and her allies. In addition to these war aims, French statesmen consistently announced the determination of France to support similar demands by France’s allies and to sign no treaty of peace that did not emancipate the nationalities subject to the enemies of France. In the course of the war the French Government entered into agreements with several of the Allies, justifying these as measures that seemed necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion. After the Russian revolution the French Government promised the people to safeguard French investments in Russia, which amounted to over four billions of dollars, almost all representing little investments of peasants and tradespeople. In preliminary discussions with President Wilson, Premier Clemenceau declared the willingness of France to adopt the American program in its entirety, including the society of nations; but he made it clear that this willingness should not be construed as the abandonment of the threefold program: “sanctions,29 réparations, garanties.” Nor could France go back upon her signature to treaties and her promise to her own people.

Believing that an idealistic program for peace, such as President Wilson outlined, must be subordinated to the two considerations of security and prosperity for their exhausted country, Premier Clemenceau and Foreign Secretary Pichon warned President Wilson, in speeches before the Chamber of Deputies in the last week of December, that they were going into the Peace Conference with definite obligations, first toward their own people, and then toward their allies—obligations that transcended the Wilsonian principles when conflict arose. France had no intention of subordinating her particular national interests to what Mr. Wilson called general world interests. Bound by definite pledges, she could not do so if she wanted to. Did not Mr. Wilson realize how greatly France had suffered? Neither then nor later has any French statesmen admitted that the idealism of President Wilson might have had as its justification the literal acceptance of their own declarations and promises during the war. Nor has any French statesmen admitted the validity of the pre-armistice agreement with Germany. From the moment the war ended down to the present time the French attitude has been that the victors were amply justified30 in whatever steps they took because, had Germany been victorious, she would have done the same.

Discarding entirely the Wilsonian principles as the basis for peace, Premier Clemenceau told the Chamber of Deputies that he was still a partisan of the “balance of power” to be maintained by alliances, and that if the nations banded against Germany had been allies in 1914 Germany would not have dared to attack France. He admitted frankly that he could not discuss with the Chamber the Government’s peace ideas because he had a maximum and a minimum program and was going into the conference to get for France all he could. This was an answer—a gauntlet of defiance thrown down, if you will—to Mr. Wilson’s Manchester speech four days earlier, when the American President declared that the “balance of power” was an exploded theory, that the United States would enter into no alliance which was not an alliance of all nations for common good, and that the creation of a new world required new methods of making peace.

M. Clemenceau did not have to appeal to the people. As the principal artisan of victory, who had deserved well of the republic, he was the national hero. Despite wide-spread dissatisfaction among the politicians over matters of internal31 administration, the people were so united in their demand for a punitive peace, which “the Tiger” embodied, that no party leader dared contest his position.

It was otherwise in England. Mr. Lloyd George had come into power during the war by deserting his old chief, Premier Asquith, and forming a coalition cabinet, dependent upon a combined Liberal and Conservative parliamentary majority. The coalition had been a war measure, born of the feeling that the Asquith Government had been making a mess of the conduct of the war, despite Mr. Asquith’s inclusion in his cabinet of Conservatives and Laborites. Immediately the war was over, it was necessary to go to the country for a new parliament. For a British delegation could not have represented Great Britain adequately in the Peace Conference with Parliament in so confused a state as to party lines. By common agreement Parliament was dissolved on November 25, and December 14 was fixed as polling-day. Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, and Mr. Barnes, representing the three parties, decided to stand together and ask the country to return Coalition members at the General Election. The Labor Party, however, did not agree with Mr. Barnes. They demanded a peace of justice, not a peace of revenge. A group of Liberals, headed by Mr. Asquith, decided32 to put candidates in the field, in opposition to the Coalition.

The British electorate was asked to choose between two programs for the Peace Conference: a victor’s peace, which was supported by the Conservatives and Coalition Liberals; and a Wilsonian peace, which was supported by the Independent Liberals and the Laborites.

It is not too much to say that the main lines of the future treaty with Germany were settled by the verdict of the British election. Mr. Lloyd George and his associates, against their own better judgment and convictions, appealed to the passions and prejudices of the masses to secure a parliamentary majority. Since both Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Bonar Law have repeatedly repudiated by acts, speeches, and written statements their own policies and arguments advanced in December, 1918, there could be no doubt of the fairness and accuracy of this assertion.

On December 10 Mr. Lloyd George summed up the Coalition program in the following points of treaty policy: (1) trial of the Kaiser; (2) punishment of those responsible for atrocities; (3) fullest indemnities from Germany. Speaking at Bristol the next day Mr. Lloyd George, on the eve of the election, declared that “we propose to demand the whole cost of the war from Germany,” that this was “an absolute right,” and that a33 financial committee appointed by the British Cabinet believed that all the costs of the war could be extracted from Germany. After his triumphant return to power Mr. Lloyd George explained that the sole guilt and responsibility of Germany for the war was to be the basis of the peace treaty, and not Mr. Wilson’s principles. Nearly a year after the Treaty of Versailles was signed (in May, 1920) he repeated that the Treaty of Versailles was built upon the assumption of Germany’s sole guilt and had no other jurisdiction. The practicability of trying the Kaiser and of extracting from Germany the total expenses of the war was not questioned by responsible British statesmen of the Coalition party until long after the Treaty of Versailles had been made.

Italy’s entrance into the war in 1915 had been prompted by considerations of national self-interest, safeguarded in the secret Treaty of London, and recognized in the zones of occupation, provided for in the armistice of November 3, 1918, that had been the death-warrant of the Hapsburg Empire. But Italy was not satisfied with all that had been offered her to abandon her neutrality. The propaganda for the possession of Fiume and for rendering Greater Serbia innocuous, economically and militarily, had already assumed formidable proportions before the Peace Conference34 met. Italy did not consider that the pre-armistice agreement with Germany affected in any way her claims, which were signally at variance with President Wilson’s ideas. She had been in the war two years longer than the United States, and the Treaty of London constituted a sacred international obligation. Had not the Allies gone to war to fight for the sanctity of treaties? Similarly, Rumania’s intervention had been bought by definite promises of territorial expansion, set down in a treaty. Japan had no secret understanding with the other Entente Powers until 1917. But when the Japanese Government realized that the United States was going to become a belligerent, its diplomats at the Entente capitals secured a written agreement giving Japan full rights to be considered Germany’s heir in China.

In regard to the German colonies and Italy’s claims in the Tyrol and the Adriatic coastlands, the four Entente Powers had a better argument even than secret treaties to anticipate the decisions of the Peace Conference. They were in possession! Great Britain, France, and Japan had conquered Germany’s colonies and had ensconced themselves in them.

Nor was the future of the Ottoman Empire going to be decided by the Peace Conference in accordance with Mr. Wilson’s ideas. Great Britain and France had arranged their claims under35 the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916, and Entente spheres of influence had been definitely outlined in 1915 and 1916. Great Britain had conquered Mesopotamia and Palestine, and she had annexed Cyprus and proclaimed a protectorate over Egypt (both of which countries she had occupied for forty years) at the outbreak of the war in 1914. France took possession of Syria and Cilicia immediately after the armistice with Turkey. The Entente Powers were in joint occupation of Constantinople. The British had gone into the Caucasus and Persia. A desultory war was being carried on against Soviet Russia, in which the United States had become involved. There were all sorts of agreements and understandings and intrigues in eastern Europe to prevent the formulation of a common policy toward Russia, which, as President Wilson put it, was to be “the acid test of our sincerity.”

The new states, Czechoslovakia and Poland, the aggrandized states, Rumania, Serbia, and Greece, and countries that had not been belligerents but expected the conference to decide their future, such as Egypt, Armenia, Persia, the Caucasus republics, Ukrainia, Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia, and Finland, were not bound, before the conference, by special agreements with any of the great powers. They furnished the most hopeful field for the application of the Wilsonian principles.36 President Wilson, with his personally selected delegates, experts, and secretaries, arrived in Paris more than a month before the conference met. Mr. Wilson received an enthusiastic reception, which was repeated in England and Italy during the holiday season. His aides and advisers were men of great ability, who had prepared themselves in the minutest details for their task. The President did not lack well informed and well balanced collaborators. They organized their offices in such a way that the peace delegation had available not only the data compiled in America but also accurate information concerning conditions, as they developed during the conference, in Europe and the Near East.

But the principal asset of success was lacking. The United States had failed to make her coöperation in the war contingent upon the acceptance by her associates of certain facts and well defined principles. None of them was pledged to us. All of them were pledged to one another in ways that were going to make futile the work that President Wilson purposed to accomplish. The Peace Conference was not going to bring to us “the moral leadership of the world.” None cared for our leadership at the beginning; and during the conference, instead of President Wilson’s imposing his ideals upon the other statesmen, they imposed theirs upon him.

37

Books about the famous conference of 1919 have multiplied so rapidly that a man must have much space to shelve them all, and he can hope to do little else if he has decided to read them thoroughly, with what the critics have to say about them. For most of the cooks in the Paris broth, after spoiling it, were unable to control the impulse to tell the world why it was not their particular fault. Coming back to America after the conference, I began to collect material about it, documents, books, reports of speeches and debates, magazine articles, newspaper cuttings of reviews of books and of letters about books and about the criticisms of them. The material mounted alarmingly. And yet I kept on reading. The general impression that comes from trying to get every angle of criticism concerning the conference is not at all confused. On the contrary, it is clear. The Paris Peace Conference, in retrospect, has few defenders of its methods or its work. It is on record, convicted by those who participated in it, as one of the most tragic and monumental failures of history.

38 M. André Tardieu is the only writer of authority who believes that the conference was conducted along proper lines and achieved results inherently right and of a permanent nature. Against this virtually solitary voice, the British premier, who signed the Treaty of Versailles, and the Italian premier, who ordered his representatives to sign it, have clamored to be heard on the other side, repudiating, denouncing, ridiculing their own work. Other outstanding signatories, notably Secretary Lansing, of the United States; Mr. Barnes, of Great Britain; Minister of Justice Doherty, of Canada; General Smuts of South Africa; Minister of Justice Vandervelde, of Belgium; and Premier Bratiano of Rumania, have criticized the Paris settlement severely. General Smuts protested against the treaty at the time he signed it, and said later in the South African Parliament: “Frankly I did not think that the treaty, even in its modified form, conformed to our pre-armistice pledges.” Speaking for Mr. Wilson, Mr. Ray Stannard Baker summed up the failure of Paris in the statement that there was “no willingness to sacrifice anything, therefore no possibility of securing real and just settlements based on coöperation. And this did not apply only to France and Great Britain; it applied also to America.”

Most of the books written on the Peace Conference39 by those who had a part in it offer, for the difficulties in the way of settlement, explanations so elaborate and painstaking—and withal so true—that one feels the force of the old French proverb: “Qui s’excuse s’accuse.”

But the world to-day, five years after the war, suffering from the consequences of the failure to establish peace at Paris in 1919, is not greatly interested in the host of reasons given for the failure. Nor does the world care enough about the title to fame of any of the actors in the great tragedy to seek to build up a case for or against the European statesmen and their American colleague. What we want to know is just what happened at Paris, without appraising the individual measure of blame. The facts give us all we want just now to help us in solving our present problem. We need only an objective account of the work of the conference, without going into details, without criticizing, without attempting to explain.

The proceedings began informally when the Italians arrived in Paris on January 9 and held a preliminary conference with the French and the Americans. The British arrived on the eleventh, and on January 12 a preliminary session was held at the Quai d’Orsay, in which France proposed that only the representatives of the five great powers should attend all the meetings of the conference, and that the minor states should be represented40 only when questions immediately affecting them were to be discussed. Among the minor states consideration should be given in allotting representation to the amount of force exerted in the defeat of Germany. After some discussion the basis of representation outlined in the previous chapter was decided upon.

The first plenary session of the conference took place on Saturday, January 18, the day having been especially chosen by the French Government. It was the anniversary of the formal proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles in 1870. President Poincaré declared the conference opened, and M. Clemenceau was elected president on the motion of Mr. Wilson, seconded by Mr. Lloyd George. M. Clemenceau said: “The program of this conference has been laid down by President Wilson. There is no question of territorial or continental peace. The peace we have to make is a peace of peoples. No mere words are required. That program stands upon its own feet. Let us work quickly and well.” With these words the session was closed, the question of the League of Nations having been placed on the agenda for the second sitting.

On January 22, at a meeting of the Supreme War Council, President Wilson proposed that an invitation be sent to all warring factions in Russia to meet at Prinkipo, in the Sea of Marmora, to41 talk peace and to come into touch with the Paris Conference. The invitation was actually issued, and some of the powers named delegates to meet the Russians at Prinkipo. The factions opposed to the Bolshevists refused to agree to a truce, however, and in this they were heartily supported by the French press. It was the first open criticism of President Wilson.

The American President still dominated the conference at the second plenary session on January 25, when he moved the resolution that would establish a commission to draw up a charter for “a League of Nations created to promote international coöperation.” The second clause in the resolution read: “This League should be treated as an integral part of the general treaty of peace, and should be opened to every civilized nation which can be relied on to promote its objects.” Both parts of this clause proved to be the undoing of the league. At the very beginning it was seen that Mr. Wilson was being manœuvered into a position where he would agree to have the league made an instrument for the enforcement of the treaty. From this group of states Germany and Russia could be indefinitely excluded on the ground that they were not to be “relied on to promote its objects.”

At the second plenary session, on the heels of the passage of the resolution establishing a League42 of Nations, came an outburst from the minor states that influenced radically the entire work of the conference. M. Hymans of Belgium protested that the organization of the conference put the real power—all the power—in the hands of the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. He demanded representation for Belgium on all the commissions. The delegates of Brazil, Canada, Jugoslavia, Greece, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, and Poland followed with similar protests and demands. Was the world going to be ruled by five powers, which, because of their size, assumed the right to dictate to all the other nations? Had not the war been fought to refute the Prussian belief that might went before right?

M. Clemenceau would allow no debate. He pointed out that the five great powers had won the war. It was their privilege to make the peace. They could have done so without reference to the smaller states. But they had graciously called these smaller states into consultation. The great powers did not purpose to consult the smaller states except in matters in which they were directly interested. Thus was notice served upon the world that nineteenth-century principles of international diplomacy had been adopted for the Paris conference. The peace treaties were going to embody the results of bargains secretly arrived at among the great powers by compromising their43 own national interests. The smaller states were to be used as pawns in the old game. The program of President Wilson, which M. Clemenceau had said was to be that of the conference, was made impossible of fulfilment by the way the conference was organized.2

The minor states understood the significance of M. Clemenceau’s answer to their protest. M. Clemenceau made it clear that there were to be no “open covenants, openly arrived at”; and his pronouncement was an invitation to the statesmen of minor countries to engage in separate negotiations with the delegates of the great powers, offering a quid pro quo for the big fellow’s support of their interests.

Let us take for example the case of M. Hymans of Belgium and M. Dmowski of Poland. M. Clemenceau was on the friendliest terms with these two men, but they thought they could do better for their country if the interests of Belgium and Poland were advanced and maintained in conference with the delegates of all the powers. But the French Foreign Office had decided that Belgium and Poland were necessary allies for France. Therefore, they were not to treat directly44 with the powers as a whole. France was to become their spokesman and defender in the inner council. This is what went on throughout the conference in regard to the interests of all the minor states. They were encouraged, or rather forced, by their very exclusion from the council table, to engage in intrigues to advance their interests. After the second plenary session Paris could not help becoming a typical nineteenth-century conference of the great powers.

On the various commissions in which the new map of Europe was being decided upon, the rival claims of the small states were upheld or opposed by the representatives of the Entente Powers not on the merits of the matter in hand but in accordance with orders issued by the respective Governments to their delegates. What these orders were depended upon the tractability of the smaller states in direct and secret negotiations with the foreign offices of the Entente Powers. On the commissions, only the American members, having no interests at stake, were acting judicially; all the others were acting politically. And, where smaller states were represented on the commissions, their votes were frequently influenced by threats and bribes. Questions like the Teschen dispute between Czechoslovakia and Poland, the Banat dispute between Jugoslavia and Rumania,45 and the Hellenistic ambitions of Greece were highly profitable for this purpose.

Mr. Wilson thought that the regulations, by which the minor states were excluded, had been adopted to make possible a practicable working committee; and he found reasonable, as did every one, M. Clemenceau’s argument that, as the great powers had won the war and would have to be responsible for the enforcement of peace, they must keep in their hands the final decisions. But Mr. Wilson did not know how the game was being played. Few of his colleagues suspected what was going on until the conference entered its fourth month. When Mr. Wilson presided at the sessions of the Commission on the League of Nations and found provision after provision being changed and modified, little did he suspect that the opposition he encountered on the part of some of the members of the commission was due not to conviction but to deals that had been made regarding questions that had nothing to do with the League.

On February 14 the League of Nations Covenant was submitted to a conference at a plenary session, President Wilson reading the text and commenting upon the clauses as he proceeded. The emasculation of the original idea and the alteration of the original drafts had occurred in the committee meetings. So the comment was perfunctory. It was the impression of observers46 that the plenary session had been convoked, just as had the others before it, as a matter of form. It was “throwing the dog a bone.” I found that many of the delegates felt the same way. One, a man of great power and influence in his own country, said to me as we were leaving the Quai d’Orsay: “I do not know why I should feel so humiliated and annoyed when I come to one of these sessions. They are such farces—we ought to laugh. But the thinly veiled insult rankles.”

When the armistice was renewed on February 16, the Germans were required to evacuate the greater part of the province of Posen, thus foreshadowing an important territorial decision months before the treaty was signed. Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George returned home for visits. When Mr. Wilson arrived back in France on March 13, he discovered that during his absence there had been an effort to separate the League of Nations scheme from the actual treaty. The reason given for this was the impatience that was being felt over the delay in imposing peace terms on Germany. Mr. Wilson saved the League, but at the price of agreeing to finish the discussion and decisions in secret meetings with the three Entente premiers. So the Council of Ten, composed of two delegates from each of “the five principal Allied and Associated Powers,” was replaced by a Council of Four.

47 From this moment, Mr. Wilson was lost altogether. At first he fought valiantly for his peace program, but he gradually yielded on this point and on that until there was nothing left of his Fourteen Points, which were supposed to be the basis upon which peace was to be built. He justified his concessions to practical international politics by the expression of his firm belief in the corrective power of the League of Nations. Whether Mr. Wilson acted wisely or was justified in his sublime faith in the League Covenant are not questions that enter into this narrative. The aftermath of one of his most criticized yieldings to expediency, that of Shantung, has seemingly vindicated this compromise. But there can be no question that the conference did not use President Wilson’s “Fourteen Points and subsequent discourses, notably that of September 27, 1918,” as the guiding principles of the treaties.

The session of the Council of Four continued week after week, not always harmoniously. Secrecy could not be maintained, for example, in regard to Mr. Lloyd George’s refusal to accept the recommendation of the Commission on Eastern Frontiers of Germany, which recommended that large districts whose population was more than 90 per cent. German be given to Poland. President Wilson was not interested in self-determination48 for the Germans.3 But he became a champion of the Jugoslavs, opposed bitterly the Italian solution of the Adriatic question, and finally attempted to appeal to the people of Italy on the Fiume question over the head of their Government. This led to the withdrawal of the Italian delegation.

Great Britain and France were bound to Italy by the treaty of 1915. While Fiume was not included in the rewards promised Italy by that treaty, northern Dalmatia was. The British and French advised the Italians not to press all their claims, but declared that they were ready to stand by their treaty engagements. Similarly, Mr. Wilson found himself isolated when the question of Shantung came up. He made himself the champion of China, but was confronted with the pledges given by the three Entente Powers to Japan. Mr. Wilson later explained he had not known of the existence of these treaties or of the agreements relating to the Ottoman Empire. But they had been published as early as 1917!

49 Between the middle of January and the end of April there were only five plenary sessions of the conference, three of them devoted to the League of Nations and one to international labor. No important question of peace had been brought before the conference as a whole, and most of the delegates knew only what the newspapers printed concerning the character of the treaty to be handed to the Germans. The delegates of the nations vitally interested knew little or nothing about the terms of the other treaties. The Council of Ten, and then the Big Four, had assumed authority and responsibility. They had made the decisions on all important questions: reparations, punishments, boundary-lines, disarmament, transportation, and various economic matters. Far East and Near East, the Pacific islands and Africa, as well as the various questions of Europe, had passed in review before the three Entente premiers and President Wilson. Details had been worked out by commissions, but these in turn reflected the foreign policies of the Entente powers. Only the League Covenant was given publicity and submitted in its various stages to the delegates as a whole.

The sixth plenary session was a private one, held on May 5, when the draft of the Treaty of Versailles was submitted to those who were supposed to have made it. There were protests on50 minor points. The major protest came from the Chinese, who declared that they could not sign the treaty if it contained the Shantung provisions, and from Marshal Foch, who announced that he considered the security given to France inadequate from the military point of view. The representatives of the smaller states were not asked, however, to approve the draft treaty. It was simply communicated to them in the same way that it was to be communicated to the Germans.

At three o’clock on the afternoon of May 7, 1919, the terms of the treaty were delivered to the German delegation, which had been summoned for that purpose to Versailles. M. Clemenceau said that any observations would have to be made in writing within fifteen days, and would be answered promptly.

The head of the German delegation, Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, replied with heat and force to M. Clemenceau’s implication that Germany was a prisoner in the dock, solely responsible for the war and its horrors. He declined the invitation to admit the unilateral responsibility of Germany and the sole guilt of Germany for crimes during the war. He reproached the Allies for having taken six months to communicate their peace terms, during which they had maintained the food blockade, which had cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of German non-combatants. He reminded51 us that a pre-armistice agreement, binding upon both parties to the war, existed, and that a peace which could not be defended as just before the whole world would in the end cause resistance to the terms imposed. “Nobody will be capable of subscribing to it with a good conscience, for it will not be possible of fulfilment. Nobody would be able to take upon himself the guarantee of its execution which ought to lie in the signature.” Cold silence greeted the count’s speech. M. Clemenceau arose, and the meeting ended. But many who were present felt that they had not been witnessing the beginning of an era of peace. The chill presentiment of a more horrible war than the one that had just ended filled us.

On May 8 the press published a brief summary of the draft treaty. As if there was something to be ashamed of, the document in full was not printed, and it was impossible for public opinion to pass judgment upon the practicability and wisdom, if not the justice, of its terms. The folly of this rigorous censorship became apparent when German and neutral newspapers published the full text in instalments. I went to Frankfort ten days after the treaty was communicated to the Germans and bought copies of the complete document in French and English at a hotel newsstand. When I returned to Paris next day, I found that it was considered lese-majesty at the52 American headquarters for a private individual to have this document in his possession. Why? No answer has ever been given to this question. Nor has it been explained why President Wilson attached importance to keeping from the American press—even from the Senate—a document that was being freely circulated in European countries other than France. During the weeks between the communication of the treaty and its signature, the press published synopses of German observations and Allied replies. But how was public opinion to understand this correspondence and approve the Allied replies when it had not been informed exactly what the document under discussion contained?

The Germans handed in voluminous notes. They contended that the territorial provisions violated President Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and declared that it would be a physical impossibility for Germany to fulfil the economic clauses. Their experts wrote out an argument to show that the failure to name a definite sum would jeopardize the authority of the new German Government, would mean economic slavery for the vanquished, and would involve all central Europe in ruin. They pointed out that the tentative sums demanded exceeded the convertible wealth of Germany, and that if the treaty were signed, with such obligations forced upon them, default would53 be inevitable. They presented a brief on the question of the responsibilty of the war, which they were asked to acknowledge, pleading that such a matter should be left to experts, with all the documents before them from the official archives of the several countries involved. They asserted that it would be impossible to force upon the German people international control of waterways and other means of transportation without reciprocity. They asked that alleged violations of the laws of war should be tried before a neutral tribunal, and asserted that they had a list of Allied war criminals against whom they could submit evidence as damning as the Allies could submit against German officers and soldiers.

At the end of May they made counter-proposals, agreeing to disarmament clauses, to the reduction of their army to one hundred thousand men, and also to the abolition of their navy. They agreed that Dantzig should be a free port, but rejected some of the territorial clauses and the penal stipulations. They refused to confess their sole responsibility for the war. They asked for plebiscites in territories taken from them by the treaty. They agreed to pay for reparations a total sum not exceeding 100,000,000,000 gold marks.

The Allies answered the German notes, one by one, in writing. No honest effort was made to54 justify in detail the terms to which the Germans objected by bringing arguments to refute the German arguments. The attitude of the Allies, in every answer, was that the Germans forgot that they had lost the war, a war for which they were solely responsible and which had brought upon the world endless misery. They were reminded of the fact that they had done more wrong than the most unfavorable terms could atone for, and that the damages due to their invasions of other countries and their diabolical destruction of cities, factories, and mines had put them beyond the pale of civilization. They ought to be glad that the terms were not harder. The terms could easily have been made harder. In none of the Allied replies was attention paid to the German claim that there had been a pre-armistice agreement, and that the Allies were using exactly opposite principles in deciding different points, invoking self-determination to justify detaching territory from Germany where there were alien majorities, and assigning historic and strategic reasons where the majorities were German. In the replies nothing was said about the unfairness of unilateral transport advantages in time of peace.

After five years, a careful reading of the Allied replies to the German observations on the Treaty of Versailles will convince one that the55 attitude of mind of the victors toward the vanquished was unstatesmanlike, to put it mildly. Many of the German arguments were poor, and could have been refuted; others were sound, and should have been ignored only if the victors felt that they could count upon remaining united and ready to make use of their military superiority, which was due only to their union, throughout the period of the execution of the treaty.

Owing to the insistence of Mr. Lloyd George, certain modifications were made in the proposed frontier with Poland, and plebiscites were provided for Upper Silesia, Marienwerder, and Allenstein. The arrangement for German repurchase of the Saar region was also modified. The final concessions were given to the Germans on June 16, subject to a five-day term for acceptance or rejection of the treaty in its entirety. This led to the downfall of the German Government and the withdrawal of von Brockdorff-Rantzau and his associates from Versailles. A new Government, composed of elements that had never before had the upper hand in Germany, was formed. Its chancellor, Herr Bauer, won the support of the National Assembly in a submission policy. The upper classes and the intellectuals in Germany were solidly opposed to signing a treaty which, they said, would only keep central Europe in turmoil indefinitely and lead to a war56 of revenge. They felt that the best course for Germany to pursue would be to allow the victors to denounce the armistice and occupy all of Germany.

This the victors were quite ready to do. The Allied armies on the Rhine were held in readiness. But the Bauer Government, supported by a demoralized and hunger-stricken people, succeeded in getting two men who were willing to go to Versailles and put their names to the treaty. On June 23 the German Government notified the Allies that it was ready to sign.

The event that ought to have marked a new era for Europe and the world took place in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on Saturday afternoon, June 28, on the spot where the German Empire had been proclaimed in 1870. Had the treaty been really based on Mr. Wilson’s program, as it purported to be, had it contained a League of Nations Covenant along the lines of the noble conception of its advocates, had one weight and one measure been applied to all alike, there would have been some hope of a European and world peace born in the hearts of men that day. And, whether just or not, the treaty would have been practicable and would have ushered in a new era had those who framed it been bound together by common interests in its enforcement. But the great powers were divided; and the small57 powers, not having had any part in the treaty-making, did not consider it as theirs. Most of the people in the room had had no opportunity to study the treaty, and many of them had not been able to get hold of a copy to read it. But all who knew what was in it realized the futility of the performance.

Most of the Frenchmen present had expressed in no uncertain terms their idea that the treaty was not drastic enough, and that M. Clemenceau had betrayed his country’s interests. The English, on the other hand, thought it was too drastic. The Americans were divided, but I think the majority shared the British sentiment. The Italians and Japanese and most of the small powers had no particular interest in the treaty. Fearing to be assassinated if they returned home after having put China’s name to such a document, the Chinese at the last minute refused to sign. Of the smaller states only the Belgians, Poles, and Czechoslovaks were vitally interested, and none of these was satisfied. Denmark received back Schleswig, but she had had to remonstrate vehemently with the Allies to prevent them from giving her more than she wanted! Russia, whose consent and coöperation were essential for the enforcement in future years of a treaty of this character, especially the supplementary Polish treaty, was not only absent but58 had made it known that she considered the treaty null and void.

The ceremony was like a funeral; for a consciousness of failure was present among the signatories. And among some was a consciousness of shame. I talked to two of the principal signatories on the eve of the ceremony, and they told me that they felt they were going to do something dishonorable. Another signatory, representing one of the British dominions, told me on the evening of June 28 that it had been the saddest day of his life.

But the only delegate who protested openly was General Smuts of South Africa. As I write I hold in my hand his mimeographed statement, which was distributed at the moment he appended his signature. This copy was given to me by Sir George Riddell as General Smuts got up to walk to the table where the treaty lay. Said the general:

I feel that in the treaty we have not yet achieved the real peace to which our peoples were looking, and I feel that the real work of making peace will only begin after this treaty has been signed.... The promise of the new life, the victory of the great human ideals, for which the peoples have shed their blood and their treasure without stint, the fulfillment of their aspirations towards a new international order, and a fairer, better world, are not written in this treaty.... A new spirit of generosity and humanity, born in the hearts of the peoples in this59 great hour of common suffering and sorrow, can alone heal the wounds which have been inflicted on the body of Christendom.... There are territorial settlements which in my humble judgment will need revision. There are guarantees laid down, which we all hope will soon be found out of harmony with the new peaceful temper and unarmed state of our former enemy. There are punishments foreshadowed, over most of which a calmer mood may yet prefer to pass the sponge of oblivion. There are indemnities stipulated, which cannot be exacted without grave injury to the industrial revival of Europe, and which it will be in the interests of all to render more tolerable and moderate. There are numerous pin-pricks which will cease to pain under the healing influence of the new international atmosphere.

The real peace of the peoples ought to follow, complete, and amend the peace of the statesmen.... The enemy peoples should at the earliest possible date join the League, and in collaboration with the Allied peoples learn to practice the great lesson of this war, that not in separate ambitions or in selfish domination, but in common service for the great human causes, lies the true path of national progress. This joint collaboration is especially necessary to-day for the reconstruction of a ruined and broken world.

President Wilson also issued a statement after the signing of the treaty, in which he asserted that it contained many things that others failed to find in it. He spoke of it as “a great charter for a new order of affairs.” From this time Mr. Wilson became an ardent champion and defender of the treaty, taking in regard to it the attitude60 that literal inspirationists take in regard to the Bible. He set forth the theory on June 28, 1919, that the important feature of the Treaty of Versailles was the League of Nations, which he believed would immediately assume the dominant position in the conduct of international affairs. Because of the Treaty of Versailles, declared Mr. Wilson,

“backward nations, populations which have not yet come to political consciousness, and peoples who are ready for independence but not yet quite prepared to dispense with protection and guidance, shall no more be subjected to the domination and exploitation of a stronger nation, but shall be put under the friendly direction and afforded the helpful assistance of governments which undertake to be responsible to the opinion of mankind in the execution of their task by accepting the direction of the League of Nations.”

Despite his seven months of daily contact with European statesmen, Mr. Wilson had preserved his optimism, and was willing to go on record as prophesying that the Entente Powers were going to interpret their mandate trusteeships in this way.

While the Treaty of Versailles was being prepared, drafts were made also of the proposed treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. It was intended that the five treaties be part of the same general settlement, each beginning61 with the League of Nations Covenant, and employing as far as possible the same order and the same phraseology. What France and Belgium had suffered at the hands of the Germans, the smaller allies had suffered at the hands of Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey. Germany’s accomplices had been guilty of as great devastation in their invasions, and of infinitely greater atrocities and wrongs inflicted upon subject peoples. This was especially true of Turkey. If a harsh treaty was just, on moral grounds, when Germany was the culprit, there was greater justification in imposing harsh treaties on the other countries that had helped Germany in her formidable assault upon civilization.

But unanimity was harder to secure in the case of the other treaties. There was some reason for allowing France to have the principal voice in the treaty with Germany, and France’s interests were identical with those of Belgium. The Treaty of Versailles involved only the creation of one new state, Poland, which France powerfully godfathered. The conflicting interests of the powers in the enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles did not arise until after the Peace Conference.

The other treaties were a different matter. Here from the beginning interests clashed, those62 of Italy and Jugoslavia in the treaty with Austria; those of Jugoslavia, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland in the treaty with Hungary; those of Jugoslavia and Greece in the treaty with Bulgaria; and those of Greece and Italy, and of Italy, France, and Great Britain, in the treaty with Turkey. The delegates of the other enemy powers had all been summoned to Paris before the Treaty of Versailles was signed, but the Allies were not ready for them.

It was felt, however, that the draft of the Austrian treaty, although incomplete, should be given to the Austrians before the Treaty of Versailles was signed. For the two treaties contained a similar important provision forbidding the union of Austria with Germany. And Austria, like Germany, was to make a large territorial contribution to the resurrection of Poland. Then, too, the treaty with Austria was as important to Italy as the treaty with Germany to France.

But the delegates of the states whose future was to be decided by the treaties with Austria and Hungary had been showing much impatience during May over the fact that they were having no part in making the draft of the treaty. They did not know what the terms were to be! Two of the Balkan premiers told me that the Conference of Paris, as far as the Danubian states63 and the Balkan states were concerned, was simply a repetition of the Conference of Berlin. The great powers were drawing up the treaty with due regard to their own interests, and their own interests alone. The smaller states were expected to gather up gratefully the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Was Italy going to have her own way with Austria, disregarding Jugoslavic claims? Italy had a voice in the secret conclaves; Jugoslavia did not. Were the great powers going to write the economic clauses of the treaties according to their own interests, and to give themselves privileges on the Danube that were being denied to Germany on her own internal waterways? During the last fortnight of May I was put in possession of information that indicated beyond the shadow of a doubt the moral bankruptcy of the conference and the mental weariness of President Wilson.

What I had been told was confirmed in the last three days of the month. Plenary sessions were held on May 29 and 31 to discuss the Austrian draft treaty. It had been the intention of the Big Three (no longer Big Four, because Signor Orlando had gone home in a huff) to make the proceedings as meaningless and formal as those of the previous plenary sessions. They had hoped to communicate an incomplete draft treaty, for Italy had not yet been appeased, and to64 present it without further delay to the Austrians, who were waiting at St.-Germain. But on May 29 Premier Bratiano and the other premiers of Succession and Balkan states had annoyingly insisted upon being given a chance to read and study the document in drafting which they were supposed to have collaborated and which they would be expected to indorse and sign. They pointed out the fact that the treaties with the remnants of the Hapsburg Empire were vital to them. They wanted to have a voice in the political and economic engagements they were to undertake. With bad grace, they were allowed forty-eight hours.

The historic eighth plenary session was held on the afternoon of May 31. Opening the proceedings, M. Clemenceau, speaking with an air of weariness and impatience, intimated that the Big Three were ready to listen to observations. Premier Bratiano of Rumania was the first speaker. He complained that the text of the treaty had been communicated only at six o’clock the evening before, and that there had not been twenty-four hours to study it. He was interrupted immediately by M. Clemenceau, who asked him to read what the Rumanians had to say. M. Bratiano made a straightforward protest against the minority clauses proposed, declaring that Rumania was ready to agree to any regulations65 for the protection of minorities that all the members of the League of Nations might adopt, but that the intervention of foreign countries in her internal affairs could not be tolerated. If the League of Nations was a reality and not a farce he argued that this body could be relied upon to protect minorities by common agreement in all the states members of the League. As the League existed, and as all powers were to have equal rights and to be treated alike, why did “the principal Allied and Associated Powers” arrogate to themselves the right to intervene in the internal affairs of Rumania, coupled with economic privileges of a special character?

M. Clemenceau answered that the powers were in a hurry to give the draft treaty to the Austrians, but that he was in agreement with M. Bratiano on the minorities question. Of course the League of Nations could attend to this matter, and France was willing to submit to any control the League proposed. M. Bratiano returned to the charge. He pointed out to M. Clemenceau that the text of the treaty entrusted the protection of minorities to the great powers and not to the League. Admitting this, now that he was cornered, M. Clemenceau said that there was nothing humiliating in the proposition that Rumania receive “friendly counsels” from the Entente Powers and the United States.

66 M. Bratiano answered that the war had been fought to establish the equality of states, irrespective of size, and that the Big Four had disregarded this principle and had established different classes of states, with varying degrees of sovereignty. This Rumania could not admit. Messrs. Paderewski for Poland, Kramar for Czechoslovakia, and Trumbich for Jugoslavia vigorously supported the thesis of M. Bratiano.

To the surprise and astonishment of every one, it was the American President who came to the rescue of Old World diplomacy. Feeling that his authority and judgment had been attacked, and not seeing the “nigger in the wood-pile” (the desire for exclusive economic privileges which had inspired his colleagues, not defense of minorities), Mr. Wilson pointed out that it is force which is the final guarantee of public peace. Mr. Wilson assumed that the United States and the Entente Powers—not the League of Nations—were to stand together indefinitely to guarantee the maintenance of the treaties that formed the Paris settlement. According to the official minutes of this session, which were passed upon and approved by the American delegation, Mr. Wilson said:

If the world finds itself again troubled, if the conditions that we all regard as fundamental are put in question, the guarantee which is given you means that the67 United States will bring to this side of the ocean their army and their fleet. Is it surprising that in these conditions they desire to act in such a way that the regulation of the different problems appear to them entirely satisfactory?4

M. Bratiano told Mr. Wilson that he had missed the point, and repeated his declaration, in which the other interested states concurred, that the equality of all states, small and large, had been the corner-stone of Mr. Wilson’s own principles and of the sword drawn in defense of Serbia and Belgium. He pointed out that if the League of Nations were entrusted with the task of protecting minorities in all countries, the states interested in the Austrian treaty would be glad68 to submit to a control that played no favorites. Then M. Bratiano asked Mr. Wilson point-blank why Italy was not included in giving definite minority pledges along with the other states who were to be successors of the Hapsburg Empire. Are there degrees of sovereignty according to size? Have large nations rights and privileges small nations do not possess? If this was the idea of the Americans as well as of the other major Allies, the statements they had made during the war were false. They were not defending Serbia and Belgium; they were fighting for their own interests, using the cause of these two small nations as a smoke-screen for selfishness. But I am afraid that in the last two sentences I have strayed from the minutes of the eighth plenary session! I have put down what M. Bratiano told me he wanted to say in his answer to the President.

The last to speak at this memorable session, M. Venizelos, suggested that the legitimate anxieties of the states immediately affected by the treaty with Austria ought to be considered, before the treaty was presented to the Austrian delegation, in a special joint meeting of the Big Four and the representatives of these states.

This was not done. The draft of the treaty was given to the Austrians at St.-Germain on June 2. After lengthy exchange of notes some69 concessions were made in the economic clauses, and an amended treaty was handed to the Austrians on July 20. Negotiations were protracted, not on account of the Austrians, who were powerless, but because the interests of Italy had to be acknowledged, and because the small states had to be appeased and bullied. The Treaty of St.-Germain was signed on September 10. By that time, however, all interest in it had died down, and, as far as its economic clauses were concerned, it was universally recognized to be more absurd and impossible of fulfilment than the Treaty of Versailles.

The Bulgarians were handed their treaty on September 19, and they signed it at Neuilly on November 27. The Hungarian and Turkish treaties had been drawn up at the same time as the others. But there was no stable government in Hungary to sign the treaty, and the Entente Powers were at loggerheads over the Turkish treaty. Before the treaties of Trianon and Sèvres were presented to the Hungarians and Turks, the Paris Peace Conference had gone out of existence, and was succeeded by the three Entente premiers, who held a series of continuation conferences frequently from January, 1920, to January, 1923.

It may be felt that I have written an unsympathetic account of the Paris Conference.70 But how can one write otherwise concerning an inglorious failure? It would be possible to explain plausibly, convincingly, why it failed. But the chronicler of contemporary history must pass on to an examination of the treaties, and then to judge them by the only criterion he has the right to use: What has happened to the world because of them? Did they bring us peace? Have they proved to be practicable? Were they the beginning of a new order? Has the League of Nations filled the rôle expected of it by those who said that its birth alone justified the Paris peace settlement and would prove its corrective?

71

The principal Allied and Associated Powers, who took upon themselves the entire responsibility for imposing and securing the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, sent an exhaustive reply to the German counter-proposals on June 16, in which, as we have seen, some concessions were made in details, modifying the draft treaty. But these were slight. In this reply they said:

They [the victors] believe that it is not only a just settlement of the great war, but that it provides the basis upon which the peoples of Europe can live together in friendship and equality. At the same time it creates the machinery for the peaceful adjustment of all international problems by discussion and consent, whereby the settlement of 1919 itself can be modified from time to time to suit new facts and new conditions as they arise. It is frankly not based upon a general condonation of the events of 1914–1918. It would not be a peace of justice if it were. But it represents a sincere and deliberate attempt to establish “that reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed, and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind,” which was72 the agreed basis of the peace. As such the treaty in its present form must be accepted or rejected.

In the light of these words, uttered by the Big Four at a solemn moment, we must examine the main features of this treaty. And lest it be thought that the American President did not approve of the treaty as signed, but agreed to it, as General Smuts did, only in the hope of its immediate and radical revision by the League of Nations, it is fair to quote the opening paragraph of Mr. Wilson’s speech at Kansas City on September 6, 1919. He said:

I came back from Paris, bringing one of the greatest documents of human history. One of the things that made it great was that it was penetrated throughout with the principles to which America has devoted her life. Let me hasten to say that one of the most delightful circumstances of the work on the other side of the water was that I discovered that what we called American principles had penetrated to the heart and to the understanding, not only of the great peoples of Europe, but to the hearts and understandings of the great men who were representing the peoples of Europe.

The Treaty of Versailles, containing 440 articles, with annexes, constitutes a large sized volume. Its first twenty-six articles contain the Covenant of the League of Nations. Then follow the boundaries of Germany; political clauses for Europe; German rights and interests outside Germany;73 military, naval, and air clauses; prisoners of war and graves; penalties; reparation; financial clauses; economic clauses; aërial navigation; ports, waterways, and railways; labor; guarantees; miscellaneous provisions.

The underlying idea of the treaty is that the Germans are a guilty and vanquished people, who are indefinitely compelled, without appeal, to put at the mercy of the conquerors their lives, their property, their territory. A reading of the treaty will convince the fair-minded man that its many “jokers” are so cleverly scattered through the treaty as to nullify what provisions it does contain for setting dates for the termination of the penalties and limitations imposed upon Germany. I saw many of these “jokers” when I read the treaty. They were patent. But a clever lawyer would find many more.

The late Senator Philander C. Knox, who had read the treaty through, told me in the autumn of 1919 that, from a legal point of view, there was no hope whatever of Germany’s being able to fulfil the obligations placed upon her. He brushed the economic questions aside, and showed me how Germany was trussed by the treaty in such a way that no matter what she did towards fulfilment she would still be in default. “With all the power and authority and good will in the world,” said our former secretary of state, “no nation on74 earth could ever acquit herself of the obligations of such a treaty. If Germany were a small nation, and her enemies bound together permanently by common interests, central Europe, under this treaty, would become within a decade a huge region inhabited by millions of slaves. As it is, the treaty indicts those who drew it up. It is a crime against civilization.” This comment was provoked when I was trying to argue with the senator that the treaty ought to be ratified with reservations.

Eight months later, on May 5, 1920, Senator Knox said publicly, addressing the Senate:

The Treaty of Versailles is almost universally discredited in all its parts. The majority of its negotiators concede this. Its economic terms are impossible; its League of Nations is an aggravated imitation of the worst features of the ill fated and foolish holy alliance of a century ago. It promises little but mischief unless recast on such radical lines as will entirely obliterate its identity.... We must proceed in accordance with the established beneficent and enlightened rules and principles of international law as they have heretofore obtained between civilized Christian nations.

The principal features of the Treaty of Versailles are the exclusion of Germany from the League of Nations; the failure to establish or promise reciprocity in any of its provisions that would otherwise have been for the common good75 of the world; the violation of the principle of self-determination where it was to the interest of the victors to ignore it; the elimination of Germany from cultural and economic participation in the development of the world; and the consecration of the principle of the right of the victors in a war to confiscate the private property of the vanquished. Let us take up these features one by one, with examples.

The Exclusion of Germany from the League of Nations. Article IV of the Covenant provides for a council of nine members, five of whom are permanent “representatives of the principal Allied and Associated Powers.” The four minority members “shall be selected by the Assembly from time to time in its discretion.” It is true that the Council “may name additional members of the League whose representatives shall always be members of the Council,” and that new members of the League may be admitted on a two thirds vote of the Assembly. But the jokers that exclude Germany from membership in the League as well as in the Council are the qualifying clauses providing that a new member “shall give effective guarantees of its sincere intention to observe its international obligations” and that each member of the Council possesses an absolute veto. It is easily seen that these jokers put the admission of Germany entirely in the hands of France, who76 can be sole judge of Germany’s worthiness. This same handicap holds in regard to Russia. And no student of world affairs believes that the League of Nations can become anything else than the subservient tool of the Entente powers, unable to move in anything against their interests or wishes, unless Germany and Russia are permanent members of the Council.

The Failure to Establish or Promise Reciprocity in Any of Its Provisions That Would Otherwise Have Been for the Common Good of the World. The Treaty of Versailles contains many good points, such as its penalties; the restoration of plunder taken from other countries during previous wars as well as during the recent war; the military, naval, and air clauses; the resurrection of Poland; the erection of mixed arbitral tribunals; aërial navigation clauses; ports, waterways and railways clauses; labor clauses; and other minor points. But all these features, good in themselves, are not written in the treaties for the purpose of establishing improved international relations but as additional means of crippling and punishing Germany. None of them are contractual, in the ordinary sense; that is, they bind only one party. Reciprocity is not provided for, even in the future. The result is not only to put Germans in a position of inferiority to citizens of neighboring nations for the time being but to give77 them no hope that this condition will ever be remedied. For the numerous jokers take away the effectiveness of the time-limits provided in some instances for withholding reciprocity.

It is inconceivable that officers and men of Allied armies had not been guilty of violations of international law during more than four years of fighting. But only Germans were to be tried, and the German Government bound itself to hand over for trial before Allied tribunals all whose names should be handed in. This impossible provision in itself put Germany in hopeless default from the moment her representatives signed the treaty. Only if the Germans had been an uncivilized tribe of savages could such provisions have been executed. Similarly, the trial of Kaiser Wilhelm, too, before an impartial tribunal would have been a splendid measure. But the treaty bound the Germans to an unheard-of thing in international relations. They were obliged to confess their rulers’ guilt and their own, as a people, before the trial! And the treaty gave no promise, as it should have done, that the question of the responsibility for the war would be fairly gone into by a court of justice, with all the evidence before it. If the purpose of the men who made the Treaty of Versailles was not vindictiveness but a desire to get at the truth, they would have coupled their demand for the trial of the Kaiser78 with a guarantee that all the documentary evidence on both sides should be brought into court. Only in this way could a fair trial have been had. The penalties clauses of the treaty, therefore, violate the accepted principles of law as well as the dictates of fair play and common sense.

If the treaty had limited itself to the restoration of the loot of the recent war, no exception could have been taken. But Germany was summoned to give up art treasures and other plunder of the long ago. Was this done because the restitution was a matter of justice or to remove ancient grievances that stood in the way of the reconciliation of peoples? If so, the victors should have promised to give back to one another and to neutral nations—and in many instances to the vanquished—the more notorious examples of loot in their own national galleries and museums. This was a trifling matter, but it showed the spirit of the treaty.

Permanent peace could never come from a one-sided application of the principle of disarmament, especially when it was coupled with the guarantees clauses. History does not record an instance where a great people, deprived of its means of defense, with portions of its territory under military occupation and neighboring enemy countries still armed to the teeth, did not find some means, internally or through alliances, to break the grip of79 its enemies. In 1870, by annexing Alsace-Lorraine, Bismarck made an armed camp of Europe. In 1919, by occupying the Rhine and disarming Germany without promising themselves to disarm, the Allies, in the Treaty of Versailles, laid the foundation for a greater and more dangerous unrest than Europe has known in modern times. Lack of reciprocity in the military, naval, and aërial clauses was practicable only (a) if the enemies of Germany were ready to form a permanent alliance and keep several million men under arms, or (b) if they were willing to kill indefinitely all male children born in Germany—and also the existing male population under twenty-five.

The resurrection of Poland could have been a glorious and blessed result of the Paris settlement had it been conceived and carried out in the interests of the Poles. But the resurrection of Poland, as provided for in the Treaty of Versailles and the supplementary treaty, was an attempt to create an artificial state for old-fashioned “balance of power” purposes. The real interests of the Poles were not considered at all. Their only hope of succeeding in rebuilding their national life lay in having boundaries that would not in the future create against them fatal antagonism on the part of their two powerful neighbors, Germany and Russia. Had Polish and not French interests been considered in writing the Treaty80 of Versailles, the new Poland would not have been saddled with the Danzig corridor, and Upper Silesia would have remained German territory. A combination of fear and greed, without statesmanlike vision, made a Poland that can never last. The frontiers of Poland, as drawn in the Treaty of Versailles, heralded war and not peace. They were a perpetuation of the worst evil from which Europe had been suffering. The corridor and the “free port of Danzig” were declared to be necessary in order to give Poland an outlet to the sea, despite the fact that Danzig is an indisputably German city. But the same men at the same time took away Trieste and Fiume from Austria and Hungary, despite the dependence of their hinterland upon them, invoking the argument of the population of the ports, the validity of which was hotly denied by them when Germany invoked it!

The erection of mixed arbitral tribunals for adjustment of war claims of private citizens put a premium upon the appeal to force. What it meant was that, if your country was successful in fighting, you had a valid claim against a citizen of a defeated country, and that your claim would be adjusted by arbiters appointed by your own country. The important thing, then, according to the Treaty of Versailles, was not the sanctity of private contracts entered into between individuals81 of different nations, but citizenship in a winning nation.

In aërial navigation and in ports, waterways, and railways, the right of the victors to transit across and privileges on German soil were affirmed without reciprocity. Not only were the Germans denied the right of transport by air and water and rail, on equal terms with other nations, outside their own country, but they were required to open up Germany to Allied control and to concede special privileges in waterways and ports, to facilitate the passage over their territory of international trains—all this without reciprocity. The time-limits set gave no reasonable hope of a change; for the removal of disabilities depended upon the integral observance of all the other treaty obligations.

The Violation of the Principle of Self-Determination Where It Was to the Interest of the Victors to Ignore It. On the ground that Alsace-Lorraine had been forcibly taken from France against the will of the inhabitants in a previous war, it was altogether just that France should receive back her “lost provinces” without a plebiscite. Even had one been taken, the result would not have been in doubt. France would have won by an overwhelming vote. It was just also to stipulate the return to Denmark of indisputably Danish territory, with a plebiscite for doubtful82 border districts. The other territorial provisions were open to question.

The most flagrant violation of the principle of self-determination was in the matter of the detachment for fifteen years (with a plebiscite at the end of that time) of the Saar Valley from Germany. This wholly German district of over half a million souls was put under the League of Nations, but really given to France to run, as compensation for the destruction of coal-mines in northern France. That the treaty of peace should have contained provisions for adequate compensation—ton-to-ton replacement—for the French losses in coal was to be expected. But the Saar arrangement was political and not economic,5 and, as far as the inhabitants of the region were concerned,83 its practical application meant for them what the Treaty of Frankfort had meant for Alsatians nearly half a century earlier. The Saar clauses constitute a shameful betrayal of the high ideals for which the war was fought. Confirmation of this statement is easily obtained. Let the reader go to the Saar and talk with the people. Violence has been done to their most sacred sentiments. Two wrongs do not make a right.

In the House of Commons on May 9, 1923, Mr. Edward Wood, a member of the Bonar Law Cabinet, who presided over the meeting of the Council of the League in April, 1923, told how the Council had virtually washed its hands of the Saar. The Commission consisted of a French president, with four assistants, a Belgian, a Dane with a French name, a Canadian, and a representative of the Saar population. The Canadian sided with the local representative in trying to prevent the oppression of the people, who were being ruled in a way that provoked them to appeal for redress to the Council. The President of the Commission had explained to the Council that the decrees, adopted by the majority of the Commission, were “not illegal” and were justified on the ground that they were adopted “to meet exceptional circumstances.” It developed in the debate that one of the decrees imposed penalties of imprisonment and fine for certain “crimes,” without84 hearing or trial or resort to appeal. Among the “crimes” was casting discredit on the Treaty of Versailles. The inhabitants of the Saar are not allowed to discuss publicly the régime that governs them or their future. Sir John Simon told the Commons that this measure was a “most astounding abuse of legislative power,” and Mr. Asquith called it a “monstrous and ridiculous decree” for the like of which “one might ransack the annals of despotism in the worst days of Russia’s oppression of Finland without finding a more monstrous specimen of despotic legislation or one more suppressive of the elementary rights of free citizenship.” Lord Robert Cecil, just back from his American tour in favor of the League of Nations, declared that the action was worthy of militarism at its worst, and that he had always had grave doubts of the wisdom of making the League responsible for the Saar régime.

The cession of Malmédy and Eupen to Belgium was clearly against the wishes of the inhabitants of those regions. During the peace negotiations I visited these places, and I visited them afterward, just as I did the Saar. The people told me that they were Germans and wanted to remain Germans. They were not given the opportunity, any more than the people of the Saar were, to vote upon their detachment from Germany. The treaty provided for registers at Malmédy and85 Eupen, in which, within a fixed time, any inhabitant of these regions could write down his desire to return to German sovereignty. The defenders of the treaty, by virtue of this curious provision, declared that the people had a chance to decide. Did they? Any one who dared to sign those registers was expelled and his property confiscated. After two or three examples of this sort, nothing more was done. It was like the right of our negroes to vote in the South. In these cases I have the facts, names, dates, and particulars of each instance.

The plebiscite for Upper Silesia contained a joker that was afterward invoked, when the decision went against Poland, by reason of which the Entente Powers were at liberty to disregard the vote if it seemed best to do so. No opportunity was given to the inhabitants of the Polish corridor, separating East and West Prussia, to vote on their own destinies. Mr. Lloyd George had secured a modification of the original draft, by which plebiscites were allowed for the Marienwerder and Allenstein regions. Although the commission on Polish frontiers at the Paris Conference had recommended the detachment of these regions from Germany, declaring that they were “predominantly Polish,” they voted 98 per cent and 95 per cent respectively to remain with Germany, and this under Allied military occupation86 and supervision! There is little doubt that if a fair plebiscite had been held everywhere, as had been promised, there would have been no corridor, and Poland would have received a much more limited frontier in Posen than she got. I was in Kattowitz, in Upper Silesia, when that city, despite its vote for Germany was allotted to Poland. A prominent citizen told me: “You have created another open sore, which will be healed only by a new war.”

If the Paris Conference was actuated by the desire to secure the fulfilment of the ideals for which we fought, rather than the triumph of the principle that might makes right, in taking away Trieste and Fiume from Austria and Hungary, these ideals were violated by taking away Danzig and Memel from Germany. I have found no apologist for the Treaty of Versailles who, when confronted with the deadly parallel here, has not admitted that different weights and different measures were applied in these cases. There is no more striking proof than Danzig and Memel, as opposed to Trieste and Fiume, of the judgment passed upon the Treaty of Versailles by Mr. Ray Stannard Baker in his recent defense of President Wilson, that the treaty was a piece of hasty patchwork, imposed at the point of a bayonet, whose terms were simply and solely due to the national interests of the victors.

87 In the provisions of the treaty relating to countries other than Germany, the principle of self-determination was ignored in regard to China, Morocco, and Egypt. The Chinese arguments about Shantung were not answered. The Egyptians sent a delegation, representing their National Assembly, to protest against the recognition of the British protectorate. But they were not given a hearing, and this provision, although there had been wide-spread riots in Egypt against the British military occupation, was put into the treaty.

The Elimination of Germany from Cultural and Economic Participation in the Development of the World. For more than a hundred years before the World War, the European nations had come to realize that their prosperity depended upon contacts with the extra-European world. These contacts they had established at the cost of great sacrifices, through colonial wars, wars with one another, and the gradual building up of investments, banks, shipping, and trading companies in all parts of the world. Because of her later unification and slower industrial development, Germany was a late comer in world politics. She struggled under great handicaps in finding a large part of the world already preëmpted when she began to look for colonies, coaling-stations, and fields for investment and economic development.88 But her progress in the few decades preceding the World War had been marvelous, and her whole economic structure was built, like that of England, upon foreign trade. Her population had gone beyond the number that could be sustained by home markets.

The greatest blow to Germany in the Treaty of Versailles was the ban it placed upon her contacts with the outside world. She was compelled to give up her colonies; to renounce her commercial treaties and concessions in every country in the world except a few South American countries that had not declared war upon her; and to surrender everything that she had built up in the way of import and export markets, by the confiscation of her shipping, foreign investments, banking and commercial establishments, concessions, privileges, etc. The aim of the treaty was to eliminate Germany as a competitor in world markets, and to make it impossible for German capital to accomplish anything in the future in Africa and Asia. Germany was called upon, also, to renounce her treaties and private concessions, her loans, and everything else that she had acquired in her relations with her former allies. Her nationals were barred from Turkey, from former German colonies, and from French and British protectorates in Africa and Asia. Her mission work in foreign countries was to be given89 up entirely and not renewed. Her missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, were never again to return to their field. Provisions were inserted in the treaty by which the victors had the right to bar German newspapers and magazines and books, as well as German goods, without reciprocity. Some one at Paris—I forget which of the outstanding figures it was—said that in the Treaty of Versailles we had reverted to the law of the jungle. The papal nuncio, Monsignor Ceretti, told me that the devil at his worst could hardly have conceived so thorough a destruction of the soul of mankind.

In connection with the various clauses throughout the treaty, which, in their ensemble, cut Germany off from the rest of the world and make her a pariah for ever among nations, an interesting dilemma faces those who hope to profit by the treaty. If they are able to enforce its provisions, do they still expect to have large reparations from a Germany bound hand and foot in the matter of her foreign trade, while enjoying the advantages in their own foreign trade of having her no longer for a competitor? And, if so, will not the example of a Germany without colonies, army, fleet, political and economic contacts with Asia and Africa, paying not only her own expenses but a huge surplus for reparations, refute the time-worn argument of economic imperialism, that a nation90 must have all these things to live? The answer to the former question is an economic one, difficult to explain and uphold, whether you say yes or no. The answer to the second question, if in the affirmative, proves that the greater part of our national expenditures are money wasted, and, if in the negative, that the Treaty of Versailles was a sentence of death passed upon a great nation, affecting not so much those guilty of the war as their progeny and an unborn generation.

The Consecration of the Principle of the Right of the Victors in a War to Confiscate the Private Property of the Vanquished. It is impossible to deny that the Treaty of Versailles infringes upon the age-old principle of the sanctity of private property. A study of its reparations and economic clauses reveals that the greatest damage done to the world during the riot of ungoverned passions at Paris was the attack made in the treaty upon the fundamental bases of society. The Treaty of Versailles assumes the dangerous doctrine that the state is all-powerful and has the right to dispose of the property of its citizens, and that a government can not only levy taxes on capital and property of a confiscatory character but is able to give a clear title to the confiscation by others of its subjects’ property.

I am sure that I have not exaggerated, or stated unfairly or extremely, this feature of the91 Treaty of Versailles. During the last five years I have had the opinion of a dozen international lawyers, French and British and American, who are agreed that this feature of the Treaty of Versailles, if applied, would lead to departures in existing notions of property and the rôle of the state so startling as to be subversive of the existing social order. The boomerang is evident. If Germany has a right to confiscate or assent to the confiscation of private property for the purposes of reparation, if the assent and carte blanche of the German Government to confiscation by the Allies gives a valid title, if taxes on capital can be levied by the German Government—all this without ruining industry in Germany—why are not these measures legal and practicable against private property and capital in other countries?

The heart of the Treaty of Versailles lay in its reparations clauses. A Reparations Commission was created, which, like the armies of occupation, was to be maintained at the expense of Germany. Not until May, 1921, was it to decide upon the amount Germany owed and could pay. The commission was given sweeping powers over Germany’s finances, internal and external. It would fix the amounts in money and kind of German reparations deliveries. Against the amounts fixed the German Government had no appeal. If it did not do as the Reparations Commission ordered,92 the commission had the power, by a majority vote, to declare Germany in default on reparations. Then the treaty provided that the victors could take what measures they decided upon to penalize Germany for the default and to collect their claims. Since no appeal or arbitration was provided for, the Treaty of Versailles gave no protection to the debtor against the rapacity and vindictiveness of the creditors. Sums due were not agreed upon by mutual consent; they were fixed by the victors. There was no protection in the treaty against possible abuse of this privilege, and no definition of the measures to be taken after default. The Treaty of Versailles thus put Germany at the absolute mercy of her conquerors, without appeal, legal or otherwise. By taking away the security of German territory, the treaty made impossible the revival of German prosperity and the fulfilment of the obligations of the treaty.

Last of all, the most curious feature of the treaty was its failure to provide the machinery for its enforcement. The Germans had been able during more than four years to withstand their enemies. And it is certain that the Entente powers could not have dictated a victors’ treaty without the coöperation of the United States. Germany signed the treaty because she was forced to do so. And, as it was a one-sided and humiliating treaty, giving the Germans no hope whatsoever93 for the future as an encouragement to fulfil its terms, the victors ought to have realized the necessity of providing, jointly, for the permanent maintenance of a huge standing army to keep the Germans in submission. A document of the nature of the Treaty of Versailles was worthless unless coercion, permanent coercion, was provided for. As events have proved, the assumption of the Paris peacemakers, i. e., that they would stick together, was wrong. What other result could be expected, then, from the Treaty of Versailles than that the Germans would obey the treaty only in so far as force was employed? The spirit of the treaty is not peace but war. The Germans were to be considered permanently as enemies. They were not to be allowed to become friends.

When you have an enemy, you do not have peace.

When you cannot count upon remaining friends with one another, and you are confronted with an unknown factor like Russia, you read over again the Treaty of Versailles and say to yourself: “If I ever believed that any good could come of it, I must have been of unbalanced judgment, owing to the passions of the moment. Certainly those who made the treaty were!”

94

From the moment of its signature, the Treaty of Versailles had “a bad press” throughout the world. Ratification by the parliaments of most of the contracting nations seemed assured, but in no country did those who favored ratification support their case by any other argument than that of expediency. It was an inadequate treaty, disappointing along practical as well as idealistic lines, its supporters admitted; but what else was there to do than to make it, imperfect as it was, the foundation of peace? After all, the compromises among the Entente Powers left them with substantial gains; and Belgium and Poland were decidedly the winners. The weak features of the treaty could be remedied in later conferences. And yet, despite the reasonableness of this argument, to all nations that participated in the conference except Great Britain and China it was a problem, what attitude they should adopt toward the Treaty of Versailles.

China solved the problem by not accepting the95 treaty at all. Her delegates refused to sign the document that put millions of their fellow-citizens of the sacred and historic province of Shantung into the hands of Japan. At the command of the President of the United States, the American Minister to China had formally invited the Chinese to participate in the World War for the triumph of certain definite principles which had been clearly set forth in detail by the President, who said he spoke on behalf of the American people. Believing in President Wilson’s good faith, the Chinese came into the war. When they discovered that in the councils of the Big Four their confidence had been betrayed, they would have nothing to do with the Treaty of Versailles. In his spectacular trip west to defend the treaty, when it was before the Senate, President Wilson tried to explain away the Shantung arrangements. But he could not do it to the satisfaction of China.

The British Parliament ratified the treaty without debate. Naturally. For, like the Treaty of Vienna a hundred years earlier, it added greatly to Great Britain’s already overwhelming world power. The continental powers were weak and disrupted, incapable of threatening in the near future “the peace of the world” as Downing Street understands that term; that is, of contesting with the mistress of the seas extra-European markets and intercontinental carrying-trade. German96 naval power was destroyed. German colonial and commercial ambitions had received a serious setback. Russia was no longer a menace to British supremacy in Asia. The Treaty of Versailles established new safeguards to India by recognizing the British protectorate over Egypt, by ignoring the plea of Persia to be a signatory or at least a beneficiary of the treaty, by making no provision for the future of Asiatic and Transcaucasian Russia, and by giving international sanction to British secret treaties, no matter what unknown provisions those treaties might contain. It made Great Britain the dominant power in Africa. It accepted the right of the British cabinet to speak, and sign, for the 300,000,000 inhabitants of India. Above all, it provided that the United States should underwrite the aggrandized British Empire, with a self-governing population of only 60,000,000, by entering a League of Nations in which the British were to have six votes and the United States, with its self-governing population of 100,000,000, one vote. It was not until later that British public opinion began to realize the danger of a weak Germany in Europe—the danger to prosperity, through disorganization of trade, and the danger to security, through the looming up of another would-be dominant power in Europe.

The Treaty of Versailles was subject to long97 and penetrating criticism in the French Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Clear-headed and far-sighted men did not cease to protest against the treaty on the same ground as American senators: (1) fear that national interests had been sacrificed to questionable international advantages; (2) uncertainty as to the adequacy of the means of enforcing the provisions in the treaty; (3) dissatisfaction with the League of Nations Covenant as it stood in the treaty; (4) doubt as to the wisdom of having incorporated in one document the solution of two different questions, imposing peace upon Germany and setting up the machinery of a new world order.

During the Conference of Paris I had the privilege of coming into intimate contact with all classes of Frenchmen. They did not deceive themselves. They knew well enough where they would have been after a few months of war, had they been facing Germany alone. Now that Germany was temporarily disabled, they wanted either a free hand to take strategic precautions against a renewal of German aggression, which meant the Rhine frontier, or a new defensive alliance in place of the Russian alliance. They had no faith whatever in the League of Nations. M. Clemenceau had been persuaded to give up the Rhine frontier in exchange for an agreement by the terms of which Great Britain and the United98 States were to come to the aid of France in case of German aggression. At the best, owing to the geographical position of the new proposed defenders, the Anglo-American guarantee was not a very certain one. After the American Senate began to attack Article X of the League of Nations Covenant, the French saw that they had been deceived. The Anglo-American guarantee was an illusion. The Treaty of Versailles, in itself, provided no permanent security for France.

In Belgium I found ratification of the treaty regarded as a painful necessity. There was no enthusiasm for it, and no hope that a new order would be born of it. The prime ministers of Greece and Rumania told me that the Versailles Treaty could not be pronounced either good or bad by their countries until the other treaties with enemy countries were included. But they both felt that not peace but a series of new wars was likely to be the result of the secret pourparlers among the Big Four that gave birth to the Treaty of Versailles. The minister of foreign affairs of another small nation expressed to me his belief that the incorporation of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles killed the League’s chances of success.

“How could international machinery for righting injustice and establishing a new international morality belong in a document that furnishes99 numerous instances of just the sort of thing the League of Nations was created to abolish?” he cried. I can see him now as he walked up and down the room, shaking both arms with elbows bended, and saying, “Pooling of interests, renunciation of special privileges, refusal to transfer territories from one sovereignty to another without consulting their inhabitants, recognition of the right of self-determination—bah! bah! BAH!” The poor man had just been shown a draft of the clauses relating to his country that were to be put into the Treaty of St.-Germain.

The statesmen of most of the smaller countries, including the neutrals invited to become charter members of the League, were afraid that the inclusion of the League of Nations in the Treaty of Versailles would make their position in this organization embarrassing. For Mr. Wilson had succeeded in his determination to connect the league inextricably with the treaty. Here was a punitive treaty, imposed upon a defeated nation, which gave great advantages to a few countries. But many countries—in fact, almost all the countries of the world—were supposed to join in the responsibility of enforcing the Treaty of Versailles, in whose advantages and loot they were not sharing. Some of them had not even been enemies of Germany. Several of them, like Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland, had common100 boundaries with Germany and did most of their business with her. Others, like Sweden, Finland, and Lithuania, not only had closer cultural relations with Germany than with the Entente Powers, but also were vitally interested in not having Germany remain in the position of economic serfdom to which the Treaty of Versailles doomed her. When the draft treaty was published, the press in all the countries neighboring on Germany, which for the most part had been unsympathetic or even actually hostile during the war, pronounced its terms impracticable and war-breeding.

In Italy the spirit of revolt against the League of Nations and a punitive treaty imposed upon Germany had begun before the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Signor Orlando was replaced in the premiership by Signor Nitti while the Germans were still debating whether they should sign or not. Italian public opinion was inflamed over the injustice of denying to Italy “sacred treaty rights,” when Japan and Poland and France (there was much talk in Italy about the Saar Valley) were granted territorial gains in defiance of the principle of self-determination. But Italy could not have Fiume! And yet the British could have Egypt! Italian newspapers declared that Italy was coming out at the small end of the horn. The Treaty of Versailles recognized and101 guaranteed in every way all British demands and selfish interests, and in almost every way French demands and selfish interests. What Japan wanted she got in defiance of Wilsonian principles. Why should Italy ratify a treaty so much to the advantage of the other Entente nations before she was sure that the Treaty of St.-Germain and the other treaties were going to give her as much loot as Great Britain, France, and Japan received from the Treaty of Versailles?

Japan was profoundly dissatisfied. It was certain that the United States, put into a hole by Mr. Wilson’s compromise, would try to wring a definite promise of restitution of Shantung to China, with a date set. But the Japanese people did not attach vital importance to the Shantung clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. They blamed their negotiators for not having made the promise of willingness to give Shantung back to China contingent upon the surrender by European Powers of footholds, concessions, and special economic and political privileges in China. What was good for the goose was good for the gander. If there was to be an open door in China, said the Japanese press, let it be really open. Morally speaking, the Treaty of Versailles, with its emasculated League of Nations Covenant, was a deception to the Japanese. They suffered in their pride by our refusal to recognize racial equality. But the102 worst feature of the Treaty of Versailles was the continued mortgaging it consecrated of the colonizable areas of the world by the white race. They had little hope that the League of Nations, as it was conceived in the treaty, would bring about a world-wide state of peace. For it begged the question of recognizing the world-wide rights of peoples to reciprocal and equal privileges and opportunities. The whole spirit of the Treaty of Versailles made the Japanese feel that Asiatic peoples would never get a square deal without fighting Europe for it.

Among Latin American delegates at Paris two strong currents were battling for mastery. Ought the Treaty of Versailles, giving birth to the League of Nations, to be welcomed in Central and South America and the West Indies as the document by which the other states of the western hemisphere were emancipated from Yankee overlordship? Or ought the Latin-American republics to fear the abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine by their entry into a world federation built upon European ideals and European atmosphere?

The League might prove a means of resisting Yankee imperialism. On the other hand, it might open the doors to something worse. The transplanting to America of the doctrine of European eminent domain would be deadly to the self-respect and prosperity of weak non-European103 nations. A distinguished South American jurist said to me at Paris: “I think you do not need to be worried about our taking this League of Nations business too seriously. For the first time in my life, since I have been sitting in this conference, I have been made to feel that I represent what Kipling calls the ‘lesser breeds without the law.’ It frightens me!”

The modified form of Article XXI of the Covenant, inserted to preserve the Monroe Doctrine, was an ambiguous sop thrown to American public opinion to quiet the apprehensions born of our traditional instincts.6 The belief, expressed several times by President Wilson in his speeches104 justifying the Treaty of Versailles, that the United States would have the leadership in the League was not shared by the representatives of Latin America. They could not take home with them any such curious notion. For they saw how the United States, with all the personal prestige of Mr. Wilson, had no real influence in the conference. Proof of this statement will be found in comparing Mr. Wilson’s war speeches with the Treaty of Versailles. Had we reason to think that our influence, after our army was disbanded and we were sitting at Geneva, would be greater than immediately after a victory won because of our aid? If the Treaty of Versailles was the result of what American prestige at its zenith was able to accomplish in leading the world morally, how could any thinking man suppose that we were going to lead the world along paths of peace in later years?

It was never true that the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles without reservation by the United States would have brought peace to Europe. It was never true that “the heart of the world” was yearning for the kind of a League of Nations that was established by the Treaty of Versailles. Our associates in the World War were eager to have a real ally in the United States, whose continued military and financial support would have enabled them to put into execution105 the Treaty of Versailles. For our moral leadership they cared nothing. They were not thinking about being “morally led” by any one.

General Sir Ian Hamilton, in the Manchester “Guardian” and the historian, Signor G. Ferrero, in the Rome “Secolo,” have pointed out the fallacy of considering the League of Nations of the Versailles Treaty a bona fide effort toward international organization and coöperation. General Hamilton believes that “the abstention of the United States is less damaging to the decisions of the so-called League of Nations than the exclusion of Germany; what Europe should have quickly is a true League of European nations, where a German can state his case and then cast his vote.” Signor Ferrero is of the opinion that the present League of Nations is doomed because of its partizan character, which its connection with the Treaty of Versailles makes it impossible to shake off. Signor Ferrero writes:

The Treaty of Versailles subjects Germany to the collective protectorate of Italy, France, and England. To imagine that the nation which, up to November, 1918, was the most powerful in the world may be thrust over night under the guardianship of three powers, each weaker than itself, is to imagine not along the lines of political realism, but of political futurism. The truth of this statement is apparent in the fact that four years after the armistice France and Belgium are caught in the106 snarl of this impossible protectorate and involved in coercive measures that will ruin Germany without saving her enemies.

It was a sad and startling fact that the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles and the merits of the proposed League of Nations became a party question immediately after the return of Mr. Wilson. Administration and anti-administration forces were pitted against each other in the Senate. Most senators voted on party lines. The Republican opponents of unreserved ratification and advocates of rejection charged that the obligations imposed upon us by the treaty were incompatible with the Constitution. President Wilson answered that the Republicans were Bolshevists, narrow-minded, out of tune with the world of to-day, contemptible quitters, German sympathizers, betrayers of the trust put in them by our soldiers, provokers of new wars to draw our boys across seas, and unconscious but none the less responsible agents of Armenian massacres, who should be “hanged high as Haman.” Denouncing the Senate for performing its duty under the Constitution; imputing unworthy motives to every senator who did not show an inclination to accept the treaty without examination, discussion, or investigation; ridiculing the members of our upper house; threatening or attempting to influence them by an appeal to their107 constituents; insinuating that opponents of immediate and unqualified ratification were pro-German—all this campaign of passion detracted singularly from the solemnity and spirit of earnestness that should have surrounded the choice of the people of the United States to abandon or to preserve unbroken the traditions that had been maintained since the birth of the republic.

Of course treaty ratification became the issue in the Presidential Campaign a year later. President Wilson announced that the election of 1920 should be a solemn referendum. The result was an overwhelming victory for the Republican party, despite the efforts of some eminent Republicans to defend the League of Nations. The new Congress terminated war with Germany and Austria by resolution, which was signed by President Harding on July 2, 1921. Six weeks later a brief peace treaty was signed in Berlin, in which Germany agreed to give the United States all the rights and advantages stipulated in the Treaty of Versailles, with the exception of certain portions specifically mentioned as excluded at the volition of the United States. The repudiated portions were: the Covenant of the League of Nations; the boundaries of Germany; the political clauses for Europe; the sections concerning German rights outside Germany, with the exception of the cession of the German colonies108 “in favor of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers”; and the provisions concerning the organization of labor. By these omissions the United States dissociated itself from the other signatories of the treaty in regard to the responsibility of the war, the trial of war criminals, and the guarantees for the fulfilment of the treaty. The right was reserved to be represented on the Reparations Commission or any other commission established under the Treaty of Versailles. But “the United States is not bound to participate in any such commission unless it shall elect to do so.”

The defection of the United States was an accepted fact in Paris when the Senate failed to ratify the treaty in November, 1919, a year before the presidential election put the stamp of popular approval upon this action. So when the Peace Conference broke up the United States was already counted out of European affairs. We did not enter at all into the other treaties.

There were three serious consequences of the failure of the United States to ratify the Treaty of Versailles: destroying the authority of the treaty as the basis of a new political and economic order; reducing the League of Nations to impotence as a tool of the Entente Powers; and making the French people realize that the Anglo-American109 guarantee of security, proposed as the alternative to the Rhine frontier, was worthless. Of the Rhine frontier we shall speak in a later chapter; for the problem of the security of France has dominated all other considerations in post-bellum Europe. At this point we have only to consider the effect upon public opinion throughout the world of the abstention of the United States from any part in enforcing the Treaty of Versailles.

The war could not have been won without the aid of the United States. The treaty could not have been imposed upon Germany without the aid of the United States. Could the treaty be enforced without the aid of the United States? Thinking men everywhere realized that the logical result of the failure of the American Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles would be the scrapping of the treaty. British public opinion, which had begun to turn against the treaty because of its heavy responsibilities and its supposed connection with British unemployment, clamored for revision of the treaty and the League, drastically if need be, in order to get the United States back into European affairs. French public opinion demanded that the French Government be prepared to use its army to collect reparations and destroy the unity of Germany,110 a policy which should end in a new treaty, directly between France and Germany, in which France was to dictate the terms mistakenly abandoned or modified during the Paris Conference.

111

The events of the past four years in Europe and Asia, coupled with the final decision of the American people not to enter the League of Nations, give us the right to call the six months of blasted hopes in 1919 the tragedy of Paris. For an astonishingly long time the Peace Conference and the treaties framed by it had their defenders, especially in the United States, where a group of what the French would call intellectuels declared that critics of the treaties and the League Covenant were unreasonable and uninformed. Colonel Edward M. House organized in Philadelphia a series of lectures on the Treaty of Versailles by experts and Presidential advisers attached to the American Commission to Negotiate Peace. The lectures were valuable contributions to Peace Conference literature. They told much, and told it well. They were accurate and comprehensive. But some of these gentlemen directly, and others by inference, said that the American public had been112 misled by correspondents whose judgments were based on gossip and rumor rather than on knowledge of what actually happened.

It is difficult for the professional writer to answer this sort of charge. Although he has as much pride in his accuracy as the college professor, and is fully as careful to base statements on source material personally investigated and tested, the newspaper correspondent is unable to cite his sources and quote his authorities. He deals with history in the making. He must be discreet. He must avoid using names. When he is accused of not knowing what he is talking about and of making sweeping assertions, he has to bide his time.

I was proud of the men of my craft at Paris. The work of the American correspondents was as trustworthy as it was brilliant. Tested by wide knowledge and experience of the field, as well as by training, some of the correspondents were better qualified to acquaint their fellow-Americans with what was going on at Paris than any expert or adviser of the American Commission. For even when they participated in the work of the various committees the American experts had neither the knowledge nor training to appreciate the forces at work that determined the decisions upon the very questions they were deliberating.

113 Events have fully justified the severe criticism that was made by correspondents upon the Treaty of Versailles while it was being drafted. Actual participants in the inner workings of the Peace Conference have now given us, in narratives and documents, full corroboration of what was cabled day by day from Paris during those fateful months. Of no great conference has there ever been given so complete and faithful a daily picture.

Except in rare instances of anecdote, such as Mr. Lamont’s graphic story of how President Wilson came to agree to include (against the advice of the lawyers on the American Commission) pensions in the reparations, Colonel House’s compilation does not give “What Really Happened at Paris” in a satisfying manner. Now, if the colonel had only written for us the frank and unreserved story of a primary witness instead of editing a volume of testimony of others, the volume would have contained invaluable pages of contemporary history. For Colonel House is the American best qualified, aside from the ex-President himself, to make a contribution to the diplomatic history of America’s participation in the war and Peace Conference.

Mr. Lansing’s book, “The Peace Negotiations,” makes it clear that only Colonel House is qualified to write the inside story of Woodrow114 Wilson and the world peace. But we do have Mr. Lansing’s contribution, Mr. Baruch’s “The Economic Sections of the Peace Treaty,” and Mr. Ray Stannard Baker’s three volumes, “Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement,” which are indictments of the treaty.

Mr. Lansing was the first of the signers of the Treaty of Versailles to realize that the consequences of the blunders at Paris were too disastrous in human suffering to permit the covering up of mistakes and the glossing over of weaknesses. He told a story that was, in every important particular, what press correspondents saw themselves or were told at the time by creditable witnesses. Mr. Lansing agreed with his predecessors in the State Department, Mr. Root and Mr. Knox, concerning the weaknesses and dangers of the Covenant and its incompatibility with American interests and ideals. He gave the text of the letter sent by General Bliss to President Wilson on April 29, appealing that the great moral principles for which the United States fought be not abandoned. Wrote General Bliss:

If it be right for Japan to annex the territory of an ally, then it cannot be wrong for Italy to retain Fiume taken from the enemy. It can’t be right to do wrong even to make peace. Peace is desirable, but there are things greater than peace—justice and freedom.

115 Mr. Lansing quotes from a memorandum he wrote on May 8, 1919, when the draft of the treaty was handed to the Germans:

The terms of peace appear immeasurably harsh and humiliating, while many of them seem to me impossible of performance.... Examine the treaty and you will find peoples delivered against their wills into the hands of those whom they hate, while their economic resources are torn from them and given to others.... It may be years before these suppressed peoples are able to throw off the yoke, but as sure as day follows night, the time will come when they will make the effort. This war was fought by the United States to destroy forever the conditions which produced it. Those conditions have not been destroyed. They have been supplanted by other conditions equally productive of hatred, jealousy, and suspicion.... The League of Nations is an alliance of the five great military powers.... Justice is secondary. Might is primary.... We have a treaty of peace, but it will not bring permanent peace because it is founded on the shifting sands of self-interest.

To Mr. Baker were entrusted the private papers, letters, and even minutes of the Council of Ten and the Council of Four, collected by President Wilson. These have been published at President Wilson’s suggestion, with the intention of showing that the Peace Conference was a struggle between the new and the old, the idealism of Mr. Wilson and the sinister forces of Old World diplomacy. In attempting to explain and116 justify Mr. Wilson’s rôle at Paris, the Baker volumes reveal much—but by no means all—of the sad story of how greed and particular interests triumphed at the Conference from beginning to end. Mr. Baker throws more light upon the inner workings of the conference, thanks to the unrivaled worth of his sources, than any other writer. But his revelations only tend to confirm the fairness of the judgments of General Smuts and Mr. Lansing.

The only other writer who has had access to unpublished and inaccessible material is M. André Tardieu, Clemenceau’s right-hand man and one of the signers of the treaty. M. Tardieu reveals that France’s policy had been from the beginning to make the Rhine the western frontier of Germany, and have all the Rhine bridges permanently occupied by interallied military forces. The chief advocate of the extreme French forward policy was Marshal Foch, who urged that the military occupation of the left bank of the Rhine was essential to the safety of France and Belgium, but he was not supported in this stand by the King of the Belgians. The compromise was arranged in April, Wilson being won over on the twentieth and Lloyd George on the twenty-second. The evacuation after fifteen years was to be dependent upon two conditions, the complete fulfilment of the treaty by Germany, and also the117 agreement among the Allies that “the guarantees against unprovoked aggression by Germany are considered sufficient by the Allied and Associated Governments.” These two jokers nullify the fifteen-year provision, and make the occupation dependent upon the will of France.

The Lansing, Baker and Tardieu books confirm the impression one had at the time, that Mr. Wilson gradually abandoned position after position, that disastrous expedients and compromises were adopted in a spirit of panic, and that the American president refused to stand with the British premier at the last minute in an effort to rid the final draft of the treaty of some of its injustices and absurdities.

The economic clauses of the treaty are ably discussed by Mr. Keynes, British expert; Mr. Baruch, American expert; and former Premier Nitti of Italy, one of the greatest European economists. These three men write from first hand, and are agreed that the economic terms imposed upon Germany were not only impossible of fulfilment but also ruinous to the European economic structure. Premier Lloyd George and Sir George Foster, who signed the treaty for Canada, have openly indorsed this position, declaring that the reparations terms were impossible from the beginning and imposed upon Germany a burden that no nation could possibly carry.

118 New light on the tragedy of Paris has also come from debates in the American Senate, the British House of Commons and House of Lords, and the South African Parliament. The testimony is concordant. The more light we get the more we realize that the Treaty of Versailles was not a treaty of peace, and that even those who made it were convinced that it would not and could not bring peace to the world.

119

Seeking a mitigation of the peace terms, the Germans at Versailles reminded their victors of the repeated assurance given the German people that the Allied and Associated Powers were making war against the Imperial German Government. The distinction had been clearly drawn by President Wilson on several occasions. The pre-armistice correspondence reiterated the difference between a government of the people and a government of the Kaiser. Had not the Germans, by a revolution, rid themselves of their discredited rulers, down to the most insignificant princeling? M. Clemenceau answered, in the name of the victors, that the German people had willed the war and had sustained it; therefore, they could not escape the responsibility for it. And, if the terms of peace were severe, it was not only because justice must be satisfied, but also because reasonable precautions must be taken against an outlaw people, still over sixty million strong.

120 There was much force in M. Clemenceau’s contention, applied to powerful Germany, with her industrial machinery intact, and enjoying a peculiarly advantageous strategic position in central Europe. But this same explanation cannot be given to excuse similar terms imposed upon six million Austrians and seven million Hungarians. As peoples, their responsibility certainly was much less. As new nations, shorn of much of their territory, heavy indemnities were absurd; and refusing the right to ethnographic frontiers on the plea of guarantees for the future was without justification. The Treaty of Versailles, had it only been practicable, was a punishment fitting a crime. The Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon are indefensible from every point of view.

“We have Balkanized all that part of Europe,” said Mr. Lloyd George ruefully. He was right. But ineptitude is none the less blameworthy because it is admitted!

“If the Hapsburg Empire did not exist, it would have to be invented,” a Russian diplomat once said. He was a political realist. His statement was a wise one from the political point of view. The developments of the last half-century have proved that it is wiser still from the economic point of view. But there was no broad statesmanship at the Paris Conference, looking to the future, and no sound economic generalship,121 setting limits to the greed and fantasies of those who divided the spoils. Fools rushed in where angels would have feared to tread. The economic evolution of the nineteenth century was disregarded. The Hapsburg Empire was partitioned in such a way as to do more violence to the will of its inhabitants than had been done under the old scheme of the Dual Monarchy, with none of the economic compensations of the destroyed political organism. New irredentisms were created, much more dangerous than the old ones. In 1914, Alsace-Lorraine was unique among European problems: it was the only instance of a people forcibly detached against their will from a country in which they had enjoyed the privilege of taking a full and conscious part in the national life. The Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon did violence on a far greater scale than the Treaty of Frankfort had done to the national sentiments of peoples. Half a dozen new Alsaces were brought to life and half a dozen new danger-zones established in Europe. When the terms of the Treaty of Versailles were made known, students of international affairs had their misgivings. When the terms of the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon were published, we realized that “the war to end war” was resulting in the creation of causes for new wars.

Of course the problem before the peacemakers122 was exceedingly difficult from many angles. The Hapsburg spoils were enormous. There were claims and counter-claims. There were promises already made. There were faits accomplis to take into consideration.

The peril of insisting upon a reasonable decision as to frontiers, a decision in accordance with principles, was demonstrated by the storm Mr. Wilson caused when he tried to defend the South Slavs against Italy. Italy had her secret treaty with the other Entente Powers. The Treaty of London, signed in 1915, had been the price paid for Italian intervention. In their desperate need the Entente Powers secretly sold out Serbia, the nation in whose defense they had begun the war, to Italy; and Italy had taken the precaution of occupying militarily what she had been promised more than three years earlier, when the armistice with Vienna was signed. In addition Italy claimed Fiume, which had been outside of the 1915 agreement. But this seemed reasonable to her, in view of modifications of that agreement elsewhere. President Wilson was given clearly to understand that his principles had nothing whatever to do with the Austrian treaty. Similarly, Rumania had her secret intervention bargain, made with the Entente Powers in 1916. And France sponsored the most extreme claims of Poles, Czechs, and Rumanians, because she intended123 to form of these peoples a bloc to take the place of Russia in the new alliance against Germany. In making the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon, therefore, border districts were bartered with no regard whatever either for the wishes or economic necessities of their inhabitants.

By these treaties Czechoslovakia was created; Poland, Rumania, and Serbia were made as large as possible and given contiguous frontiers and direct railway communications; and Italy did unto the Austrians and South Slavs what she had for half a century been complaining of the Austrians doing unto her. The result is a patchwork of states, none satisfied, and all reduced to political unrest and economic chaos. The two formerly dominant peoples of the Hapsburg Empire, the Austrians and the Hungarians, were given a large dose of the medicine they had long been prescribing to their subject peoples.

Invoking the sacred principle of nationality, Italy triumphantly completed her unification by adding the “unredeemed Italians” of the Hapsburg Empire. But with them she insisted on incorporating in Greater Italy hundreds of thousands of Austrians and South Slavs. The principles invoked here were historical and strategical. The Adriatic must become an Italian lake. To accomplish this and to have a strategic frontier,124 nearly 300,000 Austrians of the Tyrol were separated from their compatriots, and a like number of Slovenes, Croats, and Dalmatians were prevented from joining the Greater Serbia of their dreams.

To make a strong Czechoslovakia the Paris conference asserted the validity of the historical argument against Germany and Austria, and chose a boundary-line for the new state which left nearly three million Germans subject to less than twice as many Czechs. When a delegation of Germans from Bohemia protested against this decision, Mr. Lloyd George reminded them that their ancestors had followed conquering armies to settle in Bohemia, and that they had the privilege of going back where they came from if they wanted to. The Peace Conference, he said, was righting historical wrongs. They answered that they were three times as numerous as the Scotch who had gone to Ireland, and had been in Bohemia two centuries longer than the inhabitants of the Belfast region. If this solution was a just one, why was not the Ulster problem to be solved in the same way by a return of the North Irelanders to Scotland? But that was different! It all came back to the old principle of vae victis—woe to the conquered. The Czechs were given also a bit of Upper Silesia; the Hungarian town of Poszony or Pressburg (renamed Bratislava),125 for an outlet on the Danube, with half a million Hungarians along the Danube, so that the frontier of the new states would separate Vienna from Budapest and come within thirty-five miles of Budapest; and half a million Ruthenians, so that Czechoslovakia would dominate Hungary from the Carpathians.

To Poland was allotted Galicia. The eastern part of this province contains more than three million Ruthenians, in territory contiguous to Ukrainia, which is inhabited by a people of the same blood and language. This manifest injustice was covered in the Treaty of St.-Germain by making Eastern Galicia a separate territory, under Polish mandate, with a plebiscite after twenty years. But the Poles have already managed to remove the flaw in their title.

The additions to Rumania freed several million Rumanians from Hungarian rule, but put about an equal number of Hungarians, Germans, Serbs, and people of other races in Greater Rumania. Hungary was deprived of her iron and coal. Greater Serbia was allotted one of the finest towns of Hungary, Szabadka (Maria-theresiopel), an overwhelmingly Hungarian city, now cut off by the Serbian boundary from the farming country it had prospered in serving. The excuse for this glaring injustice was that Serbia needed to control the railway line passing from Croatia126 to the territories detached from Hungary for the benefit of Rumania. There are several instances of this sort of thing in the treaties.

But while the treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon limited Austria and Hungary to frontiers well within what the application of the principle of self-determination would have given them, even the non-German and non-Magyar elements in border regions felt that they, too, were sacrificed to the exigencies of international politics. Poles and Czechs were dissatisfied with the Silesian frontier and came to blows over it; Ruthenians received no recognition whatever of their right to nationhood; Slovaks suffered on economic grounds through separation from Hungary; Rumania and Serbia both claimed the Banat of Temesvár; and Jugoslavs had to be content with partial liberation, because in many regions the Jugoslavs simply changed masters, being turned over by the peace conference to Italy.

Plebiscites were provided for in two border regions only; and in these instances the motive was not that of vindicating the principle of self-determination. The district of Klagenfurt remained with Austria after its inhabitants had voted against Serbia. This was done because its possession by the Jugoslavs would have embarrassed Italy. A slice of West Hungary was awarded to Austria for the obvious purpose127 of making bad blood between the two enemy peoples.

Hungary, because of the richness of her soil, was able to live in the limits imposed by the Treaty of Trianon. But the Treaty of St.-Germain reduced Austria to a little state of six million souls, more than a third of whom lived in the city of Vienna. Upon the Austrians was saddled a huge indemnity. Not only was the indemnity impossible to maintain, but the existence even of such a country as was provided for the Austrians to live in was questioned by economists. The Austrians were reduced to dire poverty in the city of Vienna, and condemned to a hopeless future by the provision of the treaty forbidding them to unite with Germany. The Treaty of St.-Germain is the most striking example in history of vengeance wreaked upon defenseless people. Never had the tables been so suddenly and completely turned.

And yet the Austrians were only one of several peoples in the Hapsburg Empire who had made common cause with Germany. Statesmen and generals in highest places throughout the war had been Czechs, Poles, and Jugoslavs. With the exception of the Czechs, all the peoples of the Dual Monarchy had fought well throughout the war. It is patent that Austria-Hungary could never have gone through four years of war128 had not the landed aristocracy, the bankers, and the manufacturers of all the peoples of the empire supported and coöperated with the Vienna Government until the game was clearly up. But, as soon as the armistice was signed, the liberated peoples received immunity, doffed their uniforms and decorations, and asserted that they had been forced to fight against their liberators. This was not true of the great majority of them. The Jugoslavs were always bitter against the Italians. Until the latter part of 1917 the Poles had no kindly feeling for the allies of Russia, while the Austrians were their best friends. The Rumanians, like the Italians, had hesitated about abandoning their neutrality until the bribe had been made sufficiently attractive. At Vienna and Budapest throughout the war the upper classes of subject peoples were heart and soul (or at least acted as if they were!) with the cause of the Central Empires. Only the Czechs—and not the majority of them—had shown themselves disloyal.

This was natural. The Dual Monarchy was a system, a complicated system; and the picture painted for us of Germans and Magyars, less than twenty millions; lording it brutally over more than thirty millions of other races is hardly half true. The national antagonism between German129 and Czech was largely local, and was not remedied by the Treaty of St.-Germain. The Poles were very well off under Austrian rule. Jugoslavs preferred the Germans to the Italians. The great mass of Rumanians in Hungary were better educated, further advanced in self-government, and much more independent economically than the Rumanians in Rumania. The truth is that, with the exception of the Czechs, the various peoples of the Hapsburg Empire were aware of their common economic interests, and saw the advantages of belonging to a great country. Worked upon by irredentist propaganda from the outside, there had been the struggle between culture and pocketbook, with a victory for the latter up to the time of the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire.

If the Paris Conference had had at heart the best interests of the peoples of Austria-Hungary, they would have maintained the organism that united these peoples with common interests under some new program of federation. The Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon are inspired by British, French, and Italian interests, and not by a desire to make a better world to live in along the Danube. Under the nose of President Wilson, these interests were amicably adjusted by compromises and bargains. The question was never130 debated as to whether it would not be best for the peoples concerned to keep some form of a union, in which Austrian and Hungarian domination would no longer prevail.

The Entente Powers had their reasons for wanting to break up the Hapsburg dominions. Italy entered the war for this purpose. If the old political organism had been readjusted, Slavic predominance would have appeared to the Italians as a greater menace to their security than the old arrangement of Austrian and Hungarian joint hegemony. Great Britain and France were determined that Germany should never again have the Danubian countries as a reservoir from which to draw for armies to support her schemes. The dissolution of the empire blocked forever Germany’s Drang nach Osten. The Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon cut Germany off from the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. France had in mind a cordon of allies, separating Russia from Germany, and opening up the path to France from the North Sea to the Black Sea. Most important of all, the disappearance of Austria-Hungary removed the formidable commercial rivalry possible when fifty million people lived under a united government in a common customs area.

The only danger foreseen was the possibility of Austria joining Germany. This the Entente131 Powers thought they had taken care of by denying to the Germans the political unity achieved by all the other peoples of Europe.

The logical alternatives confronting the peacemakers were either establishing a new Danubian federation or allowing free rein to the national instinct as opposed to economic expediency. Blinded by the extent of their victory, and betrayed into the fallacy of believing that some national movements could be encouraged and approved and others discouraged and stamped out, the Entente Powers forgot economic and political laws. They chose neither alternative. They believed that they could use the power the victory gave them for the furtherance of their own selfish interests. But they forgot that this power was theirs because they were united, and that treaties inspired by their own interests and imposed by force would remain in vigor only so long as they remained united.

In the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon the Entente Powers departed farther than in the Treaty of Versailles from the ideals so nobly proclaimed during the war. In his speech of January 5, 1917, Mr. Lloyd George had anticipated Mr. Wilson when he told the House of Commons:

Equality of right among nations, small as well as great, is one of the fundamental issues that this country and her allies are fighting to establish in this war....132 We feel that government by consent of the governed must be the basis of any territorial settlement.... A territorial settlement must be secured, based on the right of self-determination or the consent of the governed.

133

If the Paris Conference had in mind a durable peace, no problem ought to have received more careful and judicial attention than that of the Balkan settlement. Since the first revolts against Turkish rule in Serbia and the War of Greek Independence, a hundred years of unsettled political condition in southeastern Europe had passed. It had become a truism that the conflicts among the powers began in the Balkans. Serbia’s difficulties with Austria-Hungary had precipitated the World War. But the causes of the war went back deep into the roots of Balkan history, long before either Germany or Italy played leading rôles in the councils of the great powers. What the Balkan peoples had sorely needed, in their bloody struggle for freedom from the Ottoman yoke, was non-interference of the great powers in their internal affairs and their relations among themselves. But this they had never enjoyed.

134 Disinterested friendship was not shown to the Balkan peoples in their fight for emancipation. They were encouraged to seek backing from powerful European states, and then, when they had done this, they provoked the enmity of the powers who were rivals of their actual or supposed backers. In the game for political and economic influence in the Balkans, the great powers were accustomed to use the little Balkan peoples as pawns. Thus they were set against each other. When they became independent states their boundaries were not fixed by mutual compromises but by the great powers. Thus they were not allowed a normal political evolution. It was hoped that the World War had taught the powers a lesson, and that they would have become converted to the idea of a “live and let live” policy for the Balkans, attainable only by a “hands off” policy on the part of the great powers.

Experts in Balkan affairs knew that the three great problems of the Balkans—Thrace, Macedonia, and Albania—had not been solved by the Balkan wars and the Treaties of London and Bucharest. The Turks were still in Thrace. Macedonia had not been equitably divided. The frontiers of Albania had not been fixed. It was hoped that the bitter experiences of the World War would demand of the peacemakers a courageous135 and far-seeing solution of these problems.

But from the moment the armistice was signed the attitudes of the powers toward Turkey became divergent; the sufferings of the Armenians and Greeks were forgotten; and Italy was given a free hand in Albania in the hope that she would not demand too much in Asia Minor or anything at all in Africa at the expense of French and British ambitions. As for Bulgaria, it was decided to impose upon her a punitive peace, following the lines of the treaties imposed upon Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians.

Eastern Thrace, to the Maritza River line, was all that had been left of the Ottoman Empire in Europe after the two Balkan wars. Western Thrace, with a stretch of sea-coast from the mouth of the Maritza west for sixty miles, had remained Bulgarian by the Treaty of Bucharest. In answer to President Wilson at the beginning of 1917, the Entente Powers had declared their intention of driving the Turks definitely out of Europe. Seemingly living up to this promise, the Big Four decided to take Eastern Thrace away from Turkey. But at the same time they took Western Thrace from Bulgaria, thus cutting her off from exit to the sea. The Treaty of Neuilly provided that transit and port facilities be granted136 Bulgaria. But this provision has not been executed.

The reason for separating Western Thrace from Bulgaria was the same as for separating Eastern Thrace from Turkey, that the two nations had joined the Central Empires in a war of aggression and were unworthy to rule over these provinces. But, later, Eastern Thrace was given back to Turkey. When the Bulgarians begged for the return of Western Thrace, on the ground that it was their outlet to the sea, the plea was rejected. It is clear, then, that the reasons invoked, punishment for a war of aggression and unfitness to rule over minorities in the ceded territories, were simply subterfuges. The rearrangement, like the arrangement, was made in the interests of the Entente Powers, without consideration for the wishes of the inhabitants or the economic needs of Bulgaria.

All the world knows that Macedonia has been for more than forty years the great bone of contention among Bulgarians, Serbians, and Greeks, who have been pitted against one another in this region by the Turks and the great powers alike. The Balkan alliance came to grief over the question of the partition of Macedonia. The crying injustice of the Treaty of Bucharest was what gave Germany her most powerful argument to induce Bulgaria to join the Central Empires. The137 bribe offered Bulgaria by Germany was the same as the bribe offered Italy and Rumania by the Entente Powers, the emancipation of “unredeemed” provinces. Because there had not been a fair partition of Macedonia in the Treaty of Bucharest, Bulgaria joined the Central Empires, and was able to do tremendous mischief to the cause of the Entente Powers. Germany had her bridge through to the Ottoman Empire. She was enabled to go to the aid of the Turks, attacked at Gallipoli. The war was probably prolonged by two years because of the Macedonian question!

But the Treaty of Neuilly, far from providing a solution of the Macedonian question, only made it worse by depriving Bulgaria of still more territory inhabited by Bulgarians. The new line between Serbia and Bulgaria was drawn still more to the advantage of Serbia than in 1913; and Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, was brought nearer the frontier, and placed at the mercy of armies advancing along the railway lines from the northwest and the southwest. In vain did experts on the Balkans bring to the attention of the Peace Conference the fact that the frontiers of the Treaty of Neuilly would tend to increase and not diminish causes for a new war in the Balkans. Bulgaria, cut off from the Ægean Sea by the loss of Western Thrace, excluded still more rigorously138 from Macedonia, and put in an indefensible military position as regards her capital, would have economic, ethnographic, and strategic reasons to take the first opportunity to get rid of the inequalities imposed upon her and the discriminations against her normal national development.

The Treaty of Neuilly presupposed, as did the other treaties of the Paris settlement, the complete encirclement of the victim by neighbors bound together by the common interest of keeping her permanently in a position of inferiority. It did not take into account, moreover, two possibilities: the intervention of Russia and the drifting apart of Rumania, Serbia, and Greece. A patchwork peace, a peace based on expediency, could ignore these possibilities. A durable peace would have to take them into account. Already we have seen the Turks back in Eastern Thrace, with a common frontier once more with Bulgaria. We have seen Greece, strong in 1920, grievously weakened, internally and internationally, in 1923. Greater Serbia and Greater Rumania are not really friends. They still claim against each other the Banat of Temesvár. Greater Serbia is not at the end of her difficulties with Italy. Greater Rumania holds Bessarabia in defiance of Russia. If Italians and Serbians, or Russians and Rumanians, come to blows, the aid of Bulgaria would once more be solicited by great powers. If the139 war between Greece and Turkey is renewed, Turkey, perhaps with Russia behind her, will once more solicit the aid of Bulgaria in a war that would be bound to spread to western Europe. Instead of saying that the Bulgarians would be foolish to try for the third time to change their luck in a war, is it not wiser and saner, in view of the mischief Bulgaria could still accomplish, to insist upon a peace of justice, so that Bulgaria could not again be tempted?

We cannot get rid of the latent power of any of our former enemies simply by damning them, the Bulgarians least of all. Their progress during the last half-century has been remarkable. They were the last of the Balkan peoples to be allowed to establish a separate national life, free from Turkish interference. Despite this handicap, Bulgaria has developed more rapidly than her neighbors in literacy, communications, cultivation of the land, and peasant ownership of farms. Out of every hundred inhabitants thirteen children go regularly to school, while Greece counts but six, Rumania five, and Serbia four. Among European countries Bulgaria is second only to France in distribution of the ownership of land. The World War did not seriously affect the prosperity of the people, and the crushing defeat of their hope made slight, if any, difference in their productive energy. Since the war they140 have forged ahead fast; their Government has succeeded in maintaining its stability against great odds; and in the spring of 1923 Bulgaria, first of all the vanquished, was able to make definite and satisfactory reparations arrangements with the victors.

This is only partly due, however, to the innate sobriety and habits of work of the Bulgarian people. They have enjoyed the advantage of not having a large industrial population, herded together in cities, and dependent for prosperity upon ability to compete on equal terms in world markets. And no sooner was the ink dry on the Treaty of Neuilly than the Entente Powers began once more secretly at Sofia to win a favorite position, as they had done in the past. All wanted to do business with the Bulgarians. Great Britain and France were anxious to keep Sofia from a rapprochement with Moscow. This meant everything to Rumania, also. France thought Bulgaria might some day be useful against Greece, and Italy needed a revived Bulgaria with which to threaten Greece and Serbia.

If only Greece and Serbia can be properly “managed” by their supporters of 1919, it is within the possibility of Entente diplomacy to expect to see the Treaty of Neuilly modified, in its political as well as its economic clauses, within the near future. Greece has already had that experience141 in regard to Turkey. If the Entente Powers feel that it is to their interest to do so, they will not hesitate to offer Bulgaria, at the expense of Greece and Serbia, what they took away from her in 1919, to the profit of Greece and Serbia. There is already talk of Rumania modifying her southern frontier in the Dobrudja in favor of Bulgaria. An offer of this sort Rumania will certainly make if she is threatened with invasion by Russia.

The dominant rôle in post-bellum Bulgaria has been played by Premier Stambulisky, who owed his position to the confidence he won several years ago and has maintained up to the Revolution in the Agrarian party. His remarkable hold upon the Bulgarian peasantry was due to his cleverness in saving this largest element in the country from feeling the financial consequences of losing the war. He has deliberately catered to the peasants, frankly basing his power upon their support and as frankly shaping his attitude toward problems as they arose by the desire to keep the favor of the peasants. In defiance of the Nationalists, Stambulisky came to an agreement with the Reparations Commission to give them powers over Bulgarian revenues in return for low taxation of the peasants. This hastened his downfall.

A grave source of internal danger is the Macedonian League, which is extremely active, and which cannot be controlled because the army is142 far too small to patrol effectively the Serbian frontier. At least three hundred thousand Macedonian refugees, among them people of wealth and influence, are living in Bulgaria, and they form a third of the population of the capital. From highest to lowest they work to foment the Macedonian revolutionary movement, and this makes serious trouble with the Serbian Government in its new territories, which can be held only by martial law. Bands are formed in Bulgarian territory, make raids, and then return to Bulgaria for refuge. This condition the Bulgarian Government is powerless to remedy. The Treaty of Neuilly, by proscribing conscription, makes it impossible for Bulgaria to raise troops. King Boris told me in the summer of 1922 that of the thirty-three thousand allowed by the treaty he had been able to get only fifty-five hundred. I found on personal investigation that most of the volunteers for the army came from the dregs of the population, men who could make a living in no other way.

On April 22, 1923, Premier Stambulisky won a sweeping victory in the General Election. Out of 246 seats in the Sobranje (Parliament) the Peasant Party won 213. In the previous Parliament he had had only 110 followers. The 50 Communists of the 1920 Parliament dropped to 15. The Bourgeois, united, carried only 12143 seats, electing three former premiers, Malinoff, Theodoroff, and Daneff, and two former ministers, Madjarlow and Dankaloff, who were in prison charged with high treason for having misled Bulgaria during the World War.

M. Stambulisky stood for the loyal execution of the peace treaty, on the ground that Bulgaria’s real interests lie in economic and international political rehabilitation, and not in more military adventures. He did not conceal the hope that the establishment of friendly relations with the Entente Powers and Serbia would lead to a radical revision of the Treaty of Neuilly, especially in regard to Western Thrace.

Bulgaria demonstrates the fact that a nation in defeat is not necessarily “down and out.” The country is not going to smash, no matter what burdens are laid upon the people and no matter how harsh may be the fetters forged to keep Bulgaria behind her neighbors. Four years after the war, Bulgaria had completed the deliveries of animals exacted by the Treaty of Neuilly, and yet the country was entirely under cultivation, with a surplus of cereal of more than a million tons for export; and the export had begun again of hides, beef on the hoof, and sheep. Above the reparations coal sent annually to Serbia, Bulgaria was mining enough for her needs and exporting a surplus. With the country in this condition, Bolshevism could be discounted.

144 This hope was disappointed. At the end of May it was announced at Lausanne that Venizelos had come to an agreement with Ismet Pasha which involved the cession to Turkey of a strip on the left bank of the Maritza around Karagatch, so that Turkey would have control of the railway station of Adrianople and be better able to protect that city. From the Greek point of view this was a diplomatic triumph. It was the slight price paid for Turkey’s renunciation of a war indemnity. But it made more hopeless than ever the fulfilment of the promise to Bulgaria in the Treaty of Neuilly, that she should be guaranteed a free exit to the Ægean Sea. It pointed also to the great moral of the World War, that if one possessed the force one could do in this world what one pleased. The Turks resisted the Treaty of Sèvres. Immediately the Entente Powers released them from all the inconveniences and disadvantages of having been on the losing side in the war. Why, then, should Bulgaria tamely submit to do the bidding of the Entente Powers, especially when being good meant being still further penalized?

Added to the unpopularity of Stambulisky’s foreign policy of abject surrender—so different from the example given by Mustafa Kemal Pasha in similar circumstances—was his domestic policy of running Bulgaria solely in the economic interest145 of the agrarian population. A few days after the news of Turkey’s crowning Thracian success at Lausanne reached Bulgaria, the bourgeois of Sofia, supported by former army officers and the Macedonian party, overthrew the Stambulisky Government. Stambulisky was pursued and killed. Professor Zankoff, of the University of Sofia, formed a revolutionary government, and Bulgaria entered upon a new Nationalist era which is bound to result eventually in a radical modification of the Treaty of Neuilly.

As part of the price of Italian intervention, the Entente Powers agreed to give Italy the foothold in the Balkans she had so long coveted, offering her full sovereignty over Valona, the island of Sasseno, “and surrounding territory of sufficient extent to assure defense of these points.” Italy, on her side, consented to the eventual division of northern and southern Albania between Montenegro, Serbia, and Greece. But the Albanians proved themselves able to vindicate by arms their right to survive as an independent country. The treatment of Albania is an example of the cynicism of the protestation of “the rights of small nations” as a war aim of the Entente Powers, and an illustration of the necessity for every people to rely ultimately upon its own strength to vindicate its rights.

Throughout the World War Albania was a146 battle-field of the opposing groups. After the downfall of Serbia, in the autumn of 1915, the Austro-Hungarians occupied northern and central Albania. In November, 1916, the Italians landed at Valona. The Greeks had already occupied Epirus, but were succeeded by the Italians and French. On June 3, 1917, Italy proclaimed the independence of all Albania under Italian protection, and formed a cabinet of marionettes, which sent a delegation, under Italian guidance, to the Peace Conference. In the meantime the French tried to checkmate the Italian scheme, while the Serbians, when the Austrians finally retreated, seized Mount Tarabosh, dominating Scutari.

At Paris an effort was made to adjust the rival claims of Italy, Serbia, and Greece; and no attention was paid to the claim of the Albanians that they were a nation, very much alive, and not disposed to be partitioned. Were the victorious powers going to resurrect Poland, on the ground that her partition had been a horrible crime, and then go ahead and do the same thing themselves? This pointed question was answered on January 14, 1920, when Great Britain, France, and Italy decreed anew the complete partition of Albania among Italians, Serbians, and Greeks. President Wilson sent a formal note to the three Governments, declaring the opposition of the United147 States to any such scheme. The Entente statesmen explained that they did not mean to do what they had announced, and then went on with their plans. The Albanians protested without avail to the League of Nations. Then they decided to fight. In June, 1920, began a five weeks’ struggle with Italy. The Italians were defeated everywhere and were literally driven into the sea, being compelled to evacuate even Valona. The Serbs, who had advanced on Tirana, were driven back to the lowlands.

These successes decided the fate of Albania. Italy signed an agreement on August 2, 1920, recognizing Albania’s independence, and promising to withdraw what troops she had left in the north. Albania was invited to join the League of Nations, and was formally admitted in January, 1921. Because she retained arms in hand while negotiating with Serbia, Albania was able to secure, through the League of Nations, a compromise frontier.

One Balkan state, however, was not able to escape the fate of suppression of its nationhood, as Albania had done. Montenegro was refused a seat at the Peace Conference, and has been forcibly incorporated into Greater Serbia.

148

If a new Rip Van Winkle had gone to sleep at any time in the nineteenth century and awoke to-day, one column in the morning newspaper would afford him no sensation and surprise. Were his eye to fall first upon a despatch from Constantinople, he would read it without discovering his long sleep. Metternich and Castlereagh and Talleyrand, Palmerston and Napoleon III, Bismarck and Disraeli and Waddington would find history repeating itself with a vengeance on the Bosphorus.

Throughout the World War and during the period of equal duration that followed the collapse of Turkey, European diplomacy ran true to form in the Near East. None can study the history of the great powers in relation to the Balkans and Turkey and maintain that the crisis of 1914–23 shows a difference of spirit and methods from the crises of 1801–15, 1821–30, 1833–40, 1851–56, 1875–78, 1885–86, 1893–1903, and 1908–13. This is a peculiarly distressing and149 hopeless statement to make more than four years after the creation of the League of Nations. But the truth does not set us free unless we know the truth.

Some who believe that the world was regenerated by reason of our victory over the Germans, and that the high principles of President Wilson are triumphing in international affairs because “after all we have the League of Nations,” declare that the Near Eastern situation is simply one failure which should not discredit the peace settlement as a whole. One hears them argue on the platform and one sees their articles—especially “letters to the editor”—flooding the press. We cannot expect perfection, they say, and the United States should be ashamed to have failed joining our comrades-in-arms to inaugurate a new era in world affairs. Differences of opinion among the Entente Powers? Friction in the Near East? Inability to agree upon a common policy to adopt toward Turkey? These are minor matters. The great fact is that the League of Nations is functioning!

The Near Eastern situation, however, is not a minor matter, and insisting upon having a hand in it would have been the first move of the League of Nations, had that organization been capable of tackling the problems to meet and provide a solution for which it was ostensibly created. The150 bloody wars of the nineteenth century had their origin in international rivalry in the Near East. The inability of Turkey to retain her European provinces made inevitable the recent World War. The war began in the Balkans, and there was no hope of its ending until a decisive victory had been won in the Balkans. Nor is there any hope of world peace until peace is made in the Balkans. The future of Constantinople has been the dominating factor in setting the great powers against one another since the World War precisely as before the World War. The elimination of Germany from the group of contestants does not seem to make any difference. When there is a bone, one dog less does not mean the end of the fight.

The armistice of Mudros, signed on October 30, 1918, gave the Entente Powers control of Constantinople and the Straits and stipulated the evacuation of the Russian Transcaucasian provinces by the Turks. Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Syria were already in Allied hands by conquest. Immediately after the armistice the British pressed forward into Cilicia. Three days before the armistice with Germany, Great Britain and France issued a joint declaration in the Near East, announcing that they had no designs upon these countries but were there simply as liberators,151 with the intention of helping the oppressed non-Turkish elements of the Ottoman Empire to attain complete independence.

But the Entente Powers, separately and together, were already bound by secret agreements which contained their real intentions concerning the devolution of the Ottoman Empire. In March, 1915, the British and French Governments agreed that Russia was to have Constantinople and the European hinterland up to a line drawn from Enos on the Ægean to Midia on the Black Sea; the islands in the Sea of Marmora; Imbros and Tenedos outside the Dardanelles; and the coast of Asia Minor from the Bosphorus to the mouth of the Sakaria River across to the Gulf of Ismid. In exchange, Russia assented to the giving of the middle neutral zone of Persia to Great Britain and to the proclamation of the independence of Arabia. This agreement was enlarged, after Italy entered the war, to give Russia all of Armenia as a sphere of influence.

On April 26, 1915, Great Britain, France, and Russia, among the bribes offered in the secret Treaty of London, promised Italy full sovereignty over the Dodecanese Islands and the port of Adalia, in the southwestern corner of Asia Minor, with the strategic hinterland. This was afterward enlarged to include a generous quarter or152 more of Asia Minor, going north to include Smyrna and east to include Konia in the Italian sphere of influence.

In May, 1916, France and Great Britain, to whom had been left by Russia and Italy the non-Turkish-speaking portions of the empire as spoils, concluded the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which France was to have Syria and Cilicia with the hinterland to Mosul, while Great Britain was to take Mesopotamia and Palestine.

Beginning in the summer of 1915, British emissaries began to treat with Sherif Hussein of Mecca to induce him to revolt against the Turks. Negotiations were carried on for a year. The revolution broke out at the beginning of June, 1916, when Hussein proclaimed himself independent of Ottoman rule. In December, 1916, Great Britain, France, and Italy recognized the Hedjaz as an independent kingdom, with Hussein for sovereign. The support of the Arabs being vital to the British both in the Mesopotamian and Palestinian expeditions, the British Government made secret promises to King Hussein of territorial arrangements which conflicted with their earlier promises to the French. This was revealed at the Peace Conference when Emir Feisal, the king’s son, presented the claims of his country to the Council of Ten. The Hedjaz signed the peace treaty and became a member of the League153 of Nations. The English were involved also in promises given to the Arab tribes of Mesopotamia and the Yemen, made when the situation was desperate, and to the Egyptians. Adding to the embarrassing conflicts in these promises, on December 2, 1917, the British Government, by what is known as the Balfour Declaration, promised to make Palestine a “home-land” for the Jews!

The defection of Russia reopened the most thorny problem of all, the control of Constantinople and the Straits. When the war was over, British, French and Italians occupied Constantinople, not very harmoniously, while their statesmen, still less harmoniously, wrangled and bargained over the disposition of the city.

When the Peace Conference opened, the French aim was to become the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean. Frenchmen of the old school and young illuminati alike had never forgiven Great Britain for grabbing Cyprus and doing France out of the Suez Canal and Egypt. Even the Frenchmen most in sympathy with the British were nervous, realizing that the forte of Great Britain after every war was to reap where she had sown not. When a peace treaty was signed after a war—any war—the choicest bits of spoils were found to have entered into the joy of the pax britannica. After this war, the first one with extra-European spoils in which the French154 had been on the winning side—that is, Britain’s side—they determined to have a different deal. Canada and India, Egypt and many islands, were past history. The Near East had been culturally French since the crusades. From Saloniki to Beirut, France was determined to reign supreme. Palestine represented the very last concession it was possible for the French to make. Of course, they did not hope to possess Constantinople, but they were not going to let the British settle themselves on the Bosphorus as they had done at Gibraltar and Port Said. This would mean British domination of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, and for British capital and goods the priority in markets that had been traditionally French.

Up to the time of the armistice, and afterward until the collapse of Baron Wrangel, France hoped for the miracle of the regeneration of Russia. This would have solved the Constantinople question. And as long as Venizelos was in power in Greece the French did not despair of preventing Greece from becoming infeudated to Great Britain. But aspirations in the eastern Mediterranean had to be subordinated to the more important aspiration of controlling the Rhine.

The British Foreign Office saw this from the very beginning of the Peace Conference and indicated to Mr. Lloyd George the successive moves in a skilful game. The British premier balked155 every time his French colleagues wanted to speak firmly to Germany—balked on the Rhine occupation, the Saar Valley, the entry into Frankfort, the taking over of the Ruhr basin, the Upper Silesian settlement, the amount and method of payment of the German indemnity, the trial of war prisoners, and the enforcement of German disarmament. Much of the opposition was sincere and based on common sense. But every time Mr. Lloyd George gave in to the French it was a case of do ut des; one after the other the French aims in the Near East suffered dimunition at the expense of British aims. It was not through intrigues and superior skill in working out policies in the Near East that the British gradually gained control of Constantinople, and extended the frontiers of Mesopotamia and Palestine beyond the Sykes-Picot line, but by agreeing to back the French in some new demand upon Germany!

French and British diplomacy, in considering the devolution of the Ottoman Empire, agreed on two points only: the necessity of using the Greeks to prevent Italy’s scheme of monopolizing the commerce of Asia Minor through control of Smyrna; and the passing of the buck to the United States to take over the vast bleak mountains of Armenia, so that we could become benefactors of the helpless and policemen to guard against the infiltration of Bolshevism, while the rich and fertile156 parts of the empire were being exploited by themselves.7

With all these conflicting aims, motives, and treaty entanglements, is it any wonder that the Peace Conference year brought no agreement as to the terms of the treaty to be imposed upon Turkey? When the Treaty of Versailles and the other treaties were imposed, Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria were compelled to sign a blank check, agreeing beforehand to whatever157 disposition of the Ottoman Empire the Principal Allied and Associated Powers might make. So they were out of it! But these treaties did contain a very definite provision for the peoples of Turkey. Article XXII of the League of Nations Covenant provides a mandatory government “to those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be under the sovereignty of states which formerly governed them and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” The “well-being and development of such people form a sacred trust of civilization,” so the Covenant declared, and they were divided into three classes. The first dealt with the liberated regions of the Ottoman Empire. The text is explicit:

Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be provisionally recognized subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory.

The mandatory idea was seized upon by General Smuts as a way of overcoming Mr. Wilson’s strenuous objection to the fait accompli of the distribution of Germany’s colonies. The American158 President accepted this in good faith, and agreed to present to the American people the proposal that the United States assume the Armenian mandate. Taking for granted the sincerity of his colleagues, he proposed that an international commission be sent to the Ottoman Empire to ascertain “the wishes of these communities” in regard to the selection of mandatory powers. His colleagues agreed; but they did not send their delegates. The Americans went alone, and brought back a report quite at variance with the mandate distribution as arranged among the Entente Powers.

What Mr. Wilson did not appreciate was the fact that the moot questions had been settled long before the war ended by secret compacts, and that the object of the Paris Conference was not to draw up terms of peace, in the interest of the peoples and regions concerned, but to arrive at a satisfactory adjustment of interests among the victors. The Turkish treaty was not drafted in 1919 simply because the Entente premiers could not agree upon a satisfactory compromise. They paid no attention to the Covenant, with its mandatory provision. It was too much to ask of them the fulfilment of this promise when they were unable to reconcile their previous commitments.

For instance, Article XII could not be carried out either in Palestine or Syria. Ninety per159 cent of the Palestinians, including thousands of its Jewish population, were bitterly opposed to the Balfour Declaration. Mr. Wilson’s mandate commission discovered that the great bulk of the Syrians were hostile to the French mandate. When Emir Feisal took over Damascus, in conformity with the Anglo-Hedjaz agreement and the undoubted wishes of its inhabitants, the French sent an army against him, drove him out, and hanged “for treason” many of his followers. In vain the Hedjaz invoked Articles XIII, XV, XVI, and XVII of the Covenant, which were supposed to make impossible such an event as the French expedition against Damascus. The inhabitants of Palestine, also, have tried for more than four years to get a hearing from the League of Nations, which has consistently ignored Article XXII. The Arabs of Mesopotamia were unable to secure the recognition of their rights until they had succeeded in driving the British almost entirely out of their country. The French formed the Armenians of Cilicia into regiments, told them that they were fighting for their independence, and then deserted them when French interests seemed to make it advantageous to betray the Armenians and hand Cilicia back to the Turks.

The Conference of Paris adjourned without having come to an agreement upon three vital questions: the terms of the treaty with Turkey,160 the adoption of a common policy toward Russia, and an understanding as to the means to be employed to compel Germany to fulfil the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. These problems led to a series of continuation conferences from 1920 to 1923, without reaching understandings of even a quasi-permanent nature. The continuation conferences as a whole are discussed in another chapter. Here we shall limit ourselves to the Conference of San Remo, in April, 1920, which endeavored to settle the devolution of the Ottoman Empire by drafting a treaty with Turkey. The results of its deliberations were the ill fated Treaty of Sèvres and the demonstration of two facts: that the three great problems cited above could not be dissociated; and that the Entente premiers believed that the League of Nations could not help in the solution of any one of them.

Had Czarist Russia survived the war, she would have installed herself at Constantinople. There would have been no question of international control of the Straits, an independent Armenia, or the satisfaction of Greek national aspirations. When the three premiers met at San Remo, almost a year after Premier Venizelos had been invited at Paris by Great Britain, France, and the United States to occupy Smyrna, they had to reckon with electorates weary of war and taxes and unwilling to engage in further military ventures161 in the Near East. Outside of Constantinople, held under the guns of battle-ships, the only forces available for compelling respect of their decisions were the Greek armies in Western Thrace and Smyrna. It was a case either of surrendering the fruits of the victory over Turkey or of recognizing, in a measure at least, Greek claims.

The first alternative was dismissed. Russia seemed to be behind Turkish nationalism, and the Entente Powers feared that a capitulation of Turkey would not bring peace, but rather the spread of Bolshevism in western Asia, the stirring up again of Bulgaria, the weakening of Rumania and Poland, and the encouragement of nationalist movements throughout the Mohammedan world. It seemed the lesser of two evils to allow the Greeks to defend Thrace and the Smyrna region against the Turks by granting the titles Venizelos claimed. Lloyd George faced the breakdown of the attempt to make the Caucasus a barrier to Bolshevism, and Millerand knew that the French army in the Orient was not strong enough to hold the positions it had occupied confidently the year before. In fact, the Nationalists under Mustafa Kemal Pasha had already defeated the French and driven them out of several cities, and it was only a question of time when General Gouraud would be compelled to ask the Turks for an armistice in Syria. Premier Nitti had withdrawn the Italian162 forces from Konia, and had adopted the policy of encouraging the Nationalists against the Greeks. The Greek army might be able to create such a diversion in Thrace and the hinterland of Smyrna as to save French prestige and prevent the whole-hearted coöperation of Turks with Russians.

In regard to Turkey, three decisions were necessary: what territories to detach, how to force the Turks to give them up, and what to do with them. The premiers were no more ready to make these decisions in April, 1920, than they had been the year before, but there always must be an end to a transitory period. The delay was affecting the prestige of the Entente Powers, was giving encouragement to Germany, and was threatening the harmonious relations among the visitors in the World War.

The compromise of San Remo, embodied in the treaty to be presented to the Turks at Sèvres, followed the lines of the other treaties. Its principal conditions were: (1) open Straits in peace and war to all ships; (2) control of the Straits by an international commission; (3) demolition of fortifications, and demilitarization within a zone twelve miles inland from the coast on both sides of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, thus excluding the Turks from Gallipoli peninsula; (4) cession of Thrace up to the defenses of Constantinople to Greece; (5) limitations in the Turkish sovereignty163 over Constantinople; (6) Greek protectorate over Smyrna, with a generous hinterland; (7) Italian protectorate over Adalia; (8) acceptance of a boundary in the east to be communicated later, beyond which Armenia would be independent; (9) and cession to Great Britain and France of all the Arabic-speaking portions of the empire.

Certain details were left to direct negotiations between Italy and Greece; and these led to the signing of three agreements by Premiers Nitti and Venizelos, the first of which antedated by several months the San Remo Conference. Italy promised to (1) concede Greek claims in Thrace in return for withdrawal of Greek claims to the plain of the Mæander River in Asia Minor; (2) hand over Northern Epirus to Greece; and (3) surrender all the islands of the Dodecanese to Greece, except Rhodes, for which a plebiscite was to be held after a stipulated number of years.

The Turks gained only two points: the retention of sovereignty over Constantinople, because of the intervention of Indian Mohammedans; and the return of Cilicia, the claim to which was waived by France because she was not strong enough militarily to hold it.

In the disposition of the Arabic-speaking portions of the Ottoman Empire the Treaty of Sèvres clearly and specifically violated Article XXII of the League of Nations Covenant. Palestine was164 made a “Jewish national home” under the protection of Great Britain, and the rest of the loot was divided in utmost secrecy. The premiers had consulted neither their own parliaments nor the representatives of the races whose land they were cutting up.

The Treaty of Sèvres was not signed until August 10, 1920, and was already discredited long before the ceremony of the signature. Both Premiers Millerand and Nitti had spoken openly against the treaty. The latter said that Italy would contribute no troops to enforce it, and doubted the possibility of getting it signed by men who represented the Turkish nation.

The Treaty of Sèvres was declared null and void by Syrians and Palestinians, who appealed to the League of Nations. The Arabic press sustained the thesis that the three premiers were without competency to decide the destinies of the Arabic-speaking world. They were cosignatories of the Treaty of Versailles with the delegates of the free and independent Hedjaz, and were bound by the Covenant to let the League appoint the mandatory powers after the liberated races had been consulted. Unless the creation of the Hedjaz was an expedient later to be disavowed and the League of Nations a cloak for imperialism, the San Remo Conference was as high-handed and illegal as it was impolitic. The Hedjaz was the165 logical state to consult about the future of Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia because of geographical proximity, ethnological and religious affinity, and economic interest. Why was not the Hedjaz as vitally interested in these Arabic-speaking neighboring regions as was Great Britain in Ireland?

The Entente premiers at San Remo concluded a secret agreement concerning spheres of influence and oil interests in the territories affected by the Treaty of Sèvres, which, when news of it leaked out, raised an outcry, especially in the United States. The State Department made a strong protest against the assumption on the part of the three Entente Powers of the right to regard the Ottoman mandates as exclusive monopolies. This was according to neither the text nor the spirit of the Peace Conference agreements, embodied in the Covenant.

Premier Nitti had been right in his prophecy at San Remo that representative Turks could not be found to sign the treaty. The Turkish delegation at Sèvres represented only a Constantinople Government in captivity to the Entente Powers. There was a day of mourning at Constantinople in protest against the treaty. But the Turkish Nationalists issued a defiance from Angora, declaring that the Turks would not be bound by the signature. Behind them stood not only Soviet166 Russia, which had refused to recognize the four preceding treaties, but also France and Italy, who had begun to fear that the Greeks were agents of the British, and that the scheme of demilitarizing the Straits would mean their control by the dominant sea-power.

The Treaty of Sèvres was not ratified. Its sole hope of success depended upon the Greek army. In the end it was going to be seen that force would save Turkey from partition, as it saved Albania, and that, in the chaos and anarchy and slaughter ahead, the League of Nations was going to make no effort to settle the Near Eastern question.

167

In the good old days, when the alliance with Russia was regarded as the salvation of France, Romanoffs frequently radiated from Deauville to other Norman watering-places. The honor of a visit from a Russian royal personage was commemorated in the favorite French fashion by municipalities where Socialists did not predominate. So at Houlgate, my summer home, the street leading to the Grand Hôtel used to be the Rue Marie Feodorovna. In the summer of 1917 we found that the name had been changed to Rue Prince Lvoff. Before the end of the summer it became Rue Kerensky in honor of the investigator of Brusiloff’s last offensive. That name, of course, was no longer possible in 1918. In the first summer of the victory, after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, events dictated Rue de l’Amiral Kolchak. It was replaced by Rue Wrangel, and then the street was taken away from Russia altogether!

168 I am not telling this as a funny story, but because it illustrates the tragedy of France torn from her moorings, aware of her inability to ride the storm alone on the high seas of recharted Europe, not knowing which way to turn, and instinctively cherishing the hope that the bond with Russia would not be definitely broken. Great Britain and the United States do not need alliances with other powers as the essential condition of national existence. Italy sees the door wide open to return to the Germanic alliance. But the Russian revolution confronted France with a problem that victory over Germany could not solve. Only with this fact constantly in mind can we discuss intelligently the internal evolution and foreign policy of Russia under the Soviets. For all that has happened in Russia since the overthrow of the Czarist Government is inextricably bound up with the attitude of the victors in the World War toward Russia. In the great volume of books and articles on the experiment with Communism one finds an almost universal failure to recognize this fact. Partisans pro and contra have given us pictures of Soviet Russia that are accurate enough impressions of confusion and anarchy, but that are lacking when the attempt is made to explain how and why these things have happened.

The Russian revolution, occurring at any other time than in the midst of a war affecting the interests169 of all nations, would have been regarded sympathetically, and its excesses would have been deemed inevitable. We should have awaited patiently the outcome, and it is doubtful whether any country would have shown active hostility to it or have been tempted to intervene. But, coming when it did, in western Europe and America the sole thought was to prevent the revolution from playing into the hands of Germany. Russia’s continued military coöperation was believed to be essential to victory; and, except for Germany’s stupidity in provoking the United States, the Entente Powers could not have won the war without Russia. Consequently, Entente diplomacy had only one thought, to keep the Russians in the fighting-line. It was natural, then, that the logical internal evolution of the movement was greeted with dismay. Public opinion in Allied countries read into the events of 1917 and 1918 a deliberate betrayal of the common cause, cleverly engineered by a common enemy, with the result that the Russians very soon came to be considered and treated as enemies.

Forgetting the sacrifices the Russians had made, the Allied and Associated Powers, without declaration of war, blockaded Russia, invaded Russia, supported counter-revolutionary movements, used against Russia the poison gas of propaganda, yielded to the temptation of taking advantage170 of Russia’s temporary helplessness to advance their own economic and political interests, and ignored Russia in all the treaties and agreements their victory gave them the power to make.

Of the leaders of the revolution, in its incipiency, we demanded the impossible. We insisted that they force upon the Russian people the continuance of the policies of the Czarist Government, policies which it had been the purpose of the revolution to discredit and destroy! None can study the relations of Russia with the Entente Powers during 1917, and not come to the conclusion that the Lvoff and Kerensky Governments were discredited and overthrown because they tried to keep Russia in the war without having secured from Russia’s allies a restatement of war aims. The revolution was anti-imperialist, and those who led it could keep the confidence of the people only by assuring them that the enemies of Germany were fighting for the destruction of imperialism, for which Germany stood. Germany was the enemy of civilization because she worshiped brute force as her god and was waging an unholy war to dominate the world and to force other peoples into subjection to her people, so that they might be exploited for the benefit of German industry. Czarist Russia, as had been proved by the secret treaties, had led the Russian people into171 a war, under false pretenses, for the same object as those that Germany hoped to attain.

Revolutionary Russia renounced all the loot of the secret treaties. She no longer wanted Constantinople and other portions of the Ottoman Empire. She was willing to withdraw from Persia and consent to the emancipation of Poland. Let Great Britain and France and Italy give the Russian people solemn assurances that they also renounce their shares of the hoped-for loot, and promise that they would apply the principle of self-determination to peoples subject to them, and the war would be continued. This proposal was refused. The refusal gave the Bolshevists their chance to get control of the revolutionary Government.

The Soviet régime would probably have followed the lot of all extremist groups and been drowned in its own bloodshed had it not been for the support given by the Entente Powers to various counter-revolutionary movements and to the invasion of Russia at various points by Entente armies. The Russians came to believe that the rest of the world was conspiring to destroy them. They rallied around Lenin and Trotzky, moved by the instinct of every people to repel the invader. French, British, Italians, Greeks, Americans, Japanese thus voluntarily took their place with172 Germans as enemies of Russians. Hundreds of thousands in every part of the country would have welcomed the counter-revolutionary movements and have stuck by them until the Bolshevists were overthrown had they not become convinced that outside nations were supporting the counter-revolutionists, not for Russia’s sake, but to feather their own nests. All that happened in 1918, 1919, and 1920 tended to confirm this impression. We accuse the Russians of having deserted the common cause during the war. The Russians accuse us of having involved them in a war, in which their losses were greater than those of any other belligerent, by territorial bribes to the old Czarist Government, and then, when regenerated Russia spoke for an idealistic peace, of having turned against them.

In dealing with the internal evolution and foreign policy of Russia during the years following the World War, we must get away from the belief that Boshevism and Russia are synonymous and from the comfortable feeling that Russia’s ills and the international troubles those ills have created for us, are due to the attempt of the Communists to set up in Russia a Soviet form of government and to impose their doctrines upon the rest of the world. This is only one factor, and not the most important, in the great problem of Russia’s internal and international relations.173 The difficulties arose before the Communists got control of the Government. They continued during the period of the Communists’ attempt to demonstrate the practicability of their doctrines. They remain, now that Communism has proved a failure in a country where it had a better chance of success than in any other great nation.8

It is fruitless to maintain, as some zealots do, that Communism was not given a fair chance and that its failure is due to the hostility of the world. The complete disintegration of society in Russia, when the incentive of reward for production was removed, demonstrates the visionary character of the experiment. By successive modifications of some of their ideas and the abandonment of others, the leaders of the movement themselves have confessed that they were unable to make a go of their communistic theories. Honest foreign investigators, no matter how prejudiced they were when they went, did not need much time to be convinced that the theories did not work out174 in practice. After six years, the Russian people, from Lenin down to the humblest peasant, know that the Government does not function when private and personal ownership of the machinery of production is not acknowledged and safeguarded. Brains and arms alike are used only when their possessors know that their efforts bring them some tangible reward. There will be no surplus over the day’s needs unless there is an assured title to that surplus. And this means that no usufruct, for an individual or a community, is ever created unless definite and inviolate ownership has induced the creation.

Soviet theories temporarily destroyed capital or drove it to cover. But as soon as it was seen that capital was essential to keep the country going, the laws passed in the first enthusiasm were not enforced, and were modified and repealed as quickly as could be done without losing face. Trading was resumed, and the Government began to give the necessary assurances to its own people first, and then to nationals of foreign countries, that the right to amass and transfer possessions would no longer be denied.

That the workmen could be a privileged class in the community, even though it was upon them that the revolution, begun and maintained in the cities, depended, was soon proved to be a fallacy. Food came from the country; and the peasants175 could not be forced to raise more than enough for their own needs unless they got something for their pains. Once the confiscated stocks gave out, the workmen in the cities discovered that they would have to produce what could be given in exchange for food or they would starve. The artificial limits set by law on the working day could no longer be maintained. First of all, an eight-hour day was established, soon followed by a six-hour day; wages were constantly raised; piece-work was prohibited; overtime was not allowed; and unskilled laborers were given the same pay as skilled workmen. Four years of this régime convinced the labor leaders that productive wealth could not be created by legal measures. To get good workmen back to the factories and to make possible the payment of wages that would buy food, virtually all the dreams of the early days were abandoned. Work on Saturday afternoons was restored, as well as piece-work and overtime. The pendulum has swung the other way. The labor day is now from ten to fourteen hours in most industries. Nearly fifty thousand workmen in the “Gozma,” a state factory, found themselves compelled to work sixteen hours; and, when they tried to leave, they were told that they were militarized, and were kept at work under threat of court martial with capital punishment.

176 Bolshevist propaganda abroad was a failure from the beginning. It was evident that a Government which could not succeed in establishing the communistic theory in its own country had nothing to offer to the rest of the world. There never would have been even a Bolshevist scare if other Governments had not professed to take seriously the sending out of emissaries from Moscow to unite the workers of the world in a common movement against capitalism. Had the Bolshevist movement been ignored it would never have made the stir it did. The horrible example of conditions in Russia was sufficient counter-propaganda. The saving grace of common sense has been enough to checkmate any attempts to foment a world revolution. Bolshevist propaganda fell on deaf ears, for it could not give a plausible answer to the argument, “Physician, heal thyself!”

So much for Bolshevism in its social aspect. Although the Moscow Soviet still controls, more strongly than ever, the destinies of Russia, Bolshevism has passed into history.

Had the present rulers of Russia been loyal to their own economic doctrines, they would have long ago disappeared. But they are politicians first, and have had in mind from the beginning the aim of politicians, which is to govern in such a way as to remain in power. It must be confessed177 that their success in subordinating doctrines to realities, their knowledge of controlling the people, and the growth of their qualities as statesmen have enabled them to prevent the political disintegration of Russia against great odds. The errors of their colleagues of Entente countries and the United States have helped them over rough places. Most important of all, the outlawing of Russia and the disregard of her sovereign rights and world interests by other nations have given Lenin and his associates the impulsion to defend Russia as their country against the contemptuous rapacity of other nations. Their activities in this direction won the approval of all Russians, and gradually they began to see that their foreign policy was their best card in appealing for popular support. They modified, and then abandoned, their early theories of international relations as cleverly as they abandoned their early theories of internal government.

This curious fact is not so curious after all when we consider that the Russians are human beings, ignorant perhaps, but not at all unintelligent, and that their reactions to the treatment their country has received are what ours would be, were we in their place. The instinct of self-preservation showed them the fallacy of the Bolshevist economic theories. Our blockade and non-intercourse policy helped to open their eyes178 to social and economic laws. Similarly, the Entente policy of grab, of ignoring Russian interests, of punishing Germany, of tolerating Poland’s inordinate territorial ambitions, taught the Soviet leaders the absurdity of playing a lone hand at internationalism in a world where none would follow their example but simply where all would use their profession of disinterestedness to Russia’s disadvantage. Signor Nitti knew what he was talking about when he said:

Russian hatred is growing more and more bitter towards those who, during the war, drove her to the greatest sacrifices, but, when she was crushed by force, took advantage of her fall, the fall of a friendly people, to attempt to restore the most brutal absolutism by reactionary armies, and then tried to impose a system of capitulations, in order to obtain the monopoly of her raw materials and hidden resources. In the future, even if Bolshevism has to sustain the grave charge of having reduced Russia to extreme misery by its experiments in Communism, it will have the glory of having defended the liberty of the Russian people, and of having renounced every offer of credit rather than forfeit or curtail Russian liberty in the face of the foreigner.

The great economist who, as Italy’s premier, was one of the Big Three during the eventful year after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles saw underneath the surface and was able to realize that the manner in which the Entente Powers179 were abusing their victory over Germany was welding the Russian people together once more into a powerful and united nation, convinced that its salvation lay in rallying round the Soviet Government, arms in hand. Overboard went the absurd theory of an army in which all the soldiers had an equal part in the discipline and the determination of policy and strategy!

In 1918 the Moscow Soviet emphasized the right of self-determination and encouraged the non-Russian peoples of the empire to establish their independence on the theory that the new world was going to consist of small nations, in which all peoples would have equal opportunities, based on inherent rights, and not on the strength of their armies. With what result? The French and British came into the Baltic states, the French into Poland, and French and Greeks into Ukrainia, the British into the Caucasus and northern Persia, and the Japanese into Siberia. The Entente Powers, joined by the United States, seized Archangel, aided the reactionaries in the Crimea, and took over the Transsiberian Railway as a military line for operations against Moscow. Everywhere they went these precious Allies declared that they were only trying to deliver Russia from Germany. After Germany was beaten they said they were remaining in order to restore order. But secretly they were all the time trying180 to grab oil and coal and copper and wheat and timber, and to organize the liberated peoples against Russia. While this was going on, the Peace Conference was held at Paris, and it was seen that none of the victors had any idea of applying the principle of self-determination except against the vanquished and Russia. The whole Paris settlement, including the League of Nations, read like a scheme to eliminate Russia equally with Germany from the list of great powers. Followed the continuation conferences in Europe and the Washington Conference. Surely no European nation had greater interest than Russia in the Near East and the Far East. Surely Russia was the European nation most vitally interested in the creation of Poland, Greater Rumania, the zone of the Straits, and the future of China; was equally interested with Great Britain in the future of Persia; and had as vital rights in the Pacific naval armaments as Japan, the United States, and Great Britain. And could the League of Nations be regarded as an honest effort to ameliorate international conditions without providing a permanent place for Russia on its Council?

The thesis adopted by the victors was that the Soviet Government did not represent the Russian people. But was it less representative than the old Czarist Government, to which France and181 Great Britain had allied themselves on equal terms? Was Lenin less entitled to speak for Russia than a member of the British Cabinet for India? Were the Poles more entitled to independence than the Irish? By what right did the Entente Powers presume to give Bessarabia to Rumania? Why were British armies in the Caucasus and northern Persia?

Wholly aside from its internal economic experiment, which was proving a lamentable failure, the Moscow Government realized that Russia was doomed to a worse fate than that of the conquered nations unless these schemes were checkmated. Theories of international relations had to be thrown overboard. Self-determination could not be used as a cloak by the enemies of Russia for undermining the Russian Empire while they refused to entertain self-determination as a principle to be applied within their own empires.

Germany, powerless, had to submit to the dictates of the victors. Russia did not. Warding off this danger, of course, meant the abandonment of the ideals preached in 1917 and 1918. It meant the return of militarism, of centralization of power in Moscow, and probably of the old Czarist Imperialism. There was no choice, however. The leaders of the Soviets soon became autocrats, militarists, imperialists. As in their182 internal affairs, they continued to preach cautiously the original doctrine, but in practice they fought fire with fire. And they began to see that the new Russia, internally and internationally, could not exist with policies radically different from those of the old Russia unless the other nations changed at the same time.

The first move was to get rid of the counter-revolutionary insurrections. Successively Yudenitch, Denikin, Kolchak, and Wrangel were utterly defeated. The next move was to bring back under the central authority of Moscow the outlying provinces whose independence was being used as a means of stealing Russia’s natural wealth and organizing counter-revolutionary movements. The Soviet form of government was successfully established in Ukrainia, the Caucasus states, including Armenia, the central Asiatic emirates, and throughout Siberia. This took several years, but, with the exception of Poland, Bessarabia, and the Baltic states, it was accomplished before the end of 1922 and entailed the evacuation of Siberia by the Japanese and of the Caucasus by the British. The ill fated Archangel expedition was allowed to freeze itself out.

Along with this astoundingly successful policy of reunifying Russia, vigorous diplomatic campaigns were carried on, the first to bring within the orbit of Russian influence the Asiatic neighbors,183 alliance with whom was necessary to prevent a recurrence of the effort to destroy the empire; and the second to reëstablish peace with European neighbors and secure recognition from the larger powers, trade with whom was necessary for the revival of Russian prosperity. The two campaigns were carried on simultaneously, and the Asiatic objectives were skilfully used to bring about the European ones.

Soviet Russia has not yet succeeded in coming to an understanding with China, because of the continuance of civil war in that country. But the policy of Moscow since the Washington Conference leaves no room for doubt as to the complete change from the attitude of 1918, when Russia gave up voluntarily all the rights and ambitions of the czarist régime. Now that the Russians are back in Vladivostok and have resumed through service on the Transsiberian Railway, they have once more taken over the military control of Mongolia and are beginning to insist on their rights in Northern Manchuria. It sounds like old times to read Comrade Joffe’s answer to the protest of Peking:

There is none who could prove or so much as sincerely believe that Russia pursues any selfish or imperialistic interests whatsoever in this Mongolian question. The stationing of our troops there concerns Chinese interests no less than Russian; and while, in the name of my184 people, I reject energetically the demand for their withdrawal from Urga, the only reason is that I am totally convinced that not only would this be impossible at present from the point of view of Russian interests, but that it would be impossible also from the point of view of real Chinese interests, rightly understood, let alone those of the good people of Mongolia.

No Czarist minister at his prime, no present-day Curzon or Poincaré could have done better!

When the Bolshevists announced in the early part of 1918 their intention of withdrawing from countries where Russia had no business to be, Persia was the nation to whom an amende honorable was most due. Against no people had Czarist Russia sinned more than against the Persians. In 1907 Petrograd had virtually partitioned Persia with London, and by the secret treaty of 1915, in return for Constantinople, the Czarist ministers agreed to let Great Britain have the middle zone, which was to be maintained as neutral when the Russians occupied the north and the British the south.

But Lenin and his associates soon discovered that their renunciation of a sphere of influence in Persia, just as their recognizing the independence of the Caucasus states, did not mean freedom for the natives. The Germans, and then the British, occupied the Caucasus. When the Russians withdrew from northern Persia, the185 British accepted this as a sign of weakness and not as the initiation of a new policy. British troops overran northern Persia, attempted to invade the Transcaspian province and used the Persian port of Enzeli on the Caspian Sea as a base of naval and military operations against Moscow. Then, after having prevented the Persian delegation at the Peace Conference from getting a hearing, the British intimidated the Teheran Government into signing an agreement on August 9, 1919, placing Persia completely in the power of Great Britain.

As soon as they had defeated the counter-revolutionary movements, the Bolshevists forced the British to evacuate the Caucasus and aided the Persians to expel the British from northern Persia. The treaty with the British had not been ratified by the Persian Parliament. A new treaty was concluded in 1921, this time with Moscow, which reëstablished Persia as an independent nation, master of its own destinies.

British military weakness also enabled the Soviet leaders to encourage Afghanistan to throw off the veiled British protectorate that had existed for several decades. The Russo-Afghan treaty signed at Moscow on October 16, 1920, was a success the Czarist Government had never been able to attain. After the collapse of the Kolchak insurrection and the restoration of Russian186 authority in Siberia the British Government was compelled to recognize the independence of both Persia and Afghanistan and to conclude treaties with these two countries on terms as liberal as those granted by Russia. Consequently the Persians were able to turn again to the United States in 1922 for a financial commission, and the Afghans established legations at European capitals and Washington.

Russia was freed of the constant menace of counter-revolutionary movements originating in Persia and Afghanistan. On the other hand, her new diplomatic position at Teheran and Kabul enabled her to bargain with Great Britain. In return for the renewal of economic intercourse, the Moscow Soviet promised the British to refrain from nationalist propaganda against them in India and Mesopotamia.

This Anglo-Russian bargain shows how far from their original ideals the Soviet leaders had traveled. The rights of peoples to determine their own destinies had been the slogan of Bolshevist propaganda abroad. It was to be the irresistible weapon to strike down capitalistic imperialism in Asia. But Lenin, when he found that Russia simply had to trade with England, played the game of world politics in the old way. When the British lifted the embargo against trade with Russia, the Russians were ready to187 stop the preaching, to the detriment of the British Government, of their doctrines that were to emancipate a world in slavery to capitalism!

The most signal—and cynical—success of the Bolshevists in forsaking internationalism for nationalism has been the triumphant reëntry of Russia as a factor in Near Eastern affairs. We have seen elsewhere how the Entente Powers, after ignoring Russia in drawing up the treaties that were to make the new map of Europe, believed that it was in their power to settle the devolution of the Ottoman Empire. Rid, as they thought, of the embarrassment of Russian claims to Constantinople and to a sphere of influence in Asia Minor, they acted on the assumption that the interests of three powers alone needed to be considered when, at San Remo, they decided upon the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres. Even if they had preserved a united front, it would have been difficult to ignore Russia. With the divergence of interests among them, the San Remo compromise, leaving out Russia, was as absurd as it was futile.

This was soon discovered. The Turkish Nationalists at Angora naturally appealed to Moscow for aid to prevent the dismemberment of their country. A Russo-Turkish treaty was concluded in the autumn of 1920, which was revised and strengthened in 1921 and 1922. Artillery,188 airplanes, motor-lorries, gasoline, timber, and ammunition were given to the Angora Government, which enabled Mustafa Kemal Pasha to drive the French out of Cilicia and to check the advance of the Greeks in Asia Minor. The Nationalists were thus enabled to become much stronger than the intrigues of France and Italy had planned that they should become. Owing to Russian support, the Turks at the Lausanne Conference at the end of 1922 were defiant and refused to accept a modification of the Treaty of Sèvres which would safeguard Entente economic interests in the Ottoman Empire.

Foreign Minister Tchitcherin, who represented Russia at Lausanne, was denied a seat at the peace table. The Entente Powers went to the point of declaring that the future of the Straits was not Russia’s business. This policy had unexpected results. Tchitcherin retaliated against the attempt to exclude Russia by encouraging the Turks to refuse the modified terms and the successive concessions of the Entente delegates. Then he informed the Entente Powers that Russia’s consent was essential if the new treaty was to be any more successful than the Treaty of Sèvres had been.

Russian influence over the Turks was maintained, however, at the price of giving up the one idealistic phase, the one redeeming feature, in189 Russia’s traditional policy in the Near Eastern question. In the nineteenth century Russia had defended the Christians of Turkey and the Balkans, most of them of her own faith, against Mohammedan oppression, and had been instrumental in securing the liberation, against the wishes of the other Powers, of millions of Christians from the Ottoman yoke. This glorious tradition was sacrificed in the alliance of the Moscow Soviet with the Angora Nationalists. Talking recently with a high-minded Russian, I deplored this. His answer was instructive.

“Your reproach amazes me,” said my Russian friend. “In the face of what has happened since the World War, I do not see how you have the audacity to make it. The Moscow Government does not pretend to have any interest in Christianity. You other nations not only profess to be Christian, but you reproach us for the anti-religious character of the Bolshevist movement. But our relations with Angora are inspired by the justifiable instinct of national self-preservation, and we do not pretend to be Christians any longer. You have tumbled over yourselves to placate the Turks, to make concessions to them of every kind, and to get into their good graces. You have condoned the Armenian and Greek massacres, and you have abandoned to the mercy of the Turks your fellow-Christians, who are190 also your allies, and whom you encouraged to provoke the Turks. You began by promising Christians emancipation, and you have ended by inviting the Turks to join your League of Nations. Your motive for all this—what is it? Simply to fill your pocketbooks.”

With European countries and the United States, Soviet Russia has not been so successful as with Asiatic countries. It is true that in the Paris treaties we struck at the principle of the inviolability of private property, and that by our consent to the actions of the French in the Ruhr we have seemingly approved the Communist theory that the property of individuals belongs to the state. It is true that in the past we have repudiated national obligations and that at the present time there are international debts unpaid and unfunded greater than those that Russia owes abroad. Therefore, we might have forgiven Russia for doing as we have done. But we cannot forgive her for preaching subversive doctrines. A government can practise whatever it pleases. But it must not preach that what it practises is right! This is the fundamental principle of international relations that ostracizes Soviet Russia. Other nations cannot be blamed for taking this attitude. Good manners are the sine qua non of harmonious intercourse. We are right in insisting upon a radical change in Russia’s191 manners before we take her back into our good society. How the philosophy of form does rule and regulate us!

The Bolshevists made no progress during six years with the United States. The Wilson administration declared that the Moscow Soviet did not represent Russia and could not be recognized in any way because its doctrines and practices were incompatible with those of civilized nations. Bolshevist emissaries were deported. The matter ended there. It has been easy for the United States under the Harding administration to maintain the same policy. We have taken a generous humanitarian interest in feeding the Russian people, but we do not feel impelled to have anything to do with Lenin and his associates. We can wait years longer, maintaining rigidly the policy of non-intercourse, because we do not have important economic and political interests at stake.

With the Entente Powers the situation is different. They have been called upon, separately and collectively, to decide their attitude toward the Moscow Soviet. France, Italy, and Great Britain, being in Europe and a part of Europe, and Japan, being in Asia and a part of Asia, have not been able to maintain the fiction that the Moscow Soviet is not the Russian Government. They know it is. Ostracizing Russia cuts off192 their goods from vast markets. Ignoring Russia, as we have seen above, makes uncertain of fulfilment, if not invalid, the results of all diplomatic negotiations among themselves and with the neighbors of Russia.

The British, admirable realists in international politics, were first to grasp the cutting-off-the-nose-to-spite-the-face danger of keeping Russia in Coventry. British trade was suffering, and the Russians were in a position, which was daily growing stronger, to stir things up unpleasantly against the British in India and Mesopotamia. A Soviet delegation was received in London, and as soon as the British saw that Kolchak had followed the fate of Yudenitch and Denikin they signed a trade agreement and brought into court a test case to convince the Bolshevists that what they exported would not be confiscated for claims against the former Government. The British began to trade with Russia, and British and Russians mutually promised to abstain from propaganda against one another.

Italy and smaller countries soon followed suit. France made the mistake of backing Baron Wrangel, still one more will-o’-the-wisp, and the question of the enormous debt of the Czarist régime, most of it widely distributed among French peasants, made it impossible for the French Government to renew relations with Russia.193 On the other hand, France’s persistence in backing counter-revolutionary movements, her support of Poland, her effort to control the Little Entente, her commercial treaty with Finland, her rôle at the Genoa Conference, and her treatment of Germany combined to increase the bitterness between the closely allied nations of pre-war days. In the summer of 1922 France began to make overtures to Moscow; but these did not go far. The invasion of the Ruhr, following upon the Lausanne Conference, widened the breach.

The first of the post-war conferences to which Russia was invited was that of Genoa in the spring of 1922. At the very beginning of the conference, however, France insisted that Russia, as the price of political recognition, accept conditions that no delegates, having the interest either of their country or political party at heart, could have accepted. The opening sessions of the Genoa Conference were so arranged as to give the Russian delegates the suspicion that the conference was intending to discredit them. They resented the effort to make them appear, as the Germans had been made to appear at Versailles, as criminals and debtors. The financial proposals of the Entente Powers they believed would reduce Russia to economic servitude, and they refused to accept them.

The Russians at Genoa were confronted with194 the same unilateral application of a principle as had confronted the Germans at Versailles. They were told that the return of Russia into the family of nations was dependent upon the recognition of the pre-war debt of Russia, upon repayment of the sums borrowed by the Russian Government from the Allies during the war, and upon the settlement of claims of foreigners for property nationalized by the Soviet. The Russians answered that they would be willing to do this if the Entente Powers would recognize Russia’s equal right to participate in all the pecuniary and other advantages of their victory, which these sums had been spent to obtain. As for the claims of foreigners against the Soviet, Russia would pay these if the Allies would pay for the confiscation of money and the damages done by the anti-Soviet generals, Kolchak, Denikin, and Wrangel, who had been armed by the Allies against Russia. The Russian claims for damages were far greater than those presented by the Entente Powers.

Soviet counter-claims were indignantly rejected. The Entente Powers had no idea of admitting reciprocity, and insisted that Russia would have to pay. Her claims against the Entente Powers were thrown out of court.

For several months Russia had been negotiating a treaty with Germany, with whom there195 were claims on both sides to be adjusted. Since Germany had been compelled by the Treaty of Versailles to renounce the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, there had been no new document to take its place. Before Russians and Germans arrived at Genoa, the treaty had not taken final form. But when the representatives of the two nations saw that the Entente Powers intended to settle their affairs for them by decisions secretly taken in pre-conference meetings from which they were excluded, they withdrew to Rapallo, where the treaty was signed. This disturbing news for the Entente Powers was announced on Easter Sunday. The Russo-German treaty provided for mutual waiving of war claims, with the stipulation that Russia should make no agreement with a third power except on similar terms, and for the resumption of full diplomatic relations.

The Entente statesmen protested vigorously against the conclusion of a direct agreement of this character both to Dr. Rathenau and M. Tchitcherin, asserting that it anticipated and prejudiced the general principle of settlement with Russia, in which Germany’s interests were the same as those of the other nations. The Germans were accused of bad faith and the Russians of duplicity. Loudest in denunciation were Mr. Lloyd George and M. Barthou. When Germans and Russians both answered that the negotiations196 had begun long before the Genoa Conference, but that anyway, even if they had not, the two delegations, excluded from the secret conferences of the preceding fortnight, had only followed the example given them by the British and French delegations, there was a wrathful outburst.

The assumption was that Great Britain and France had the right to do what they denied to Germany and Russia. Germany was a defeated nation. Russia was an outlaw nation. They should not forget their complete dependence upon the Entente Powers. There was truth in this contention in so far as Germany was concerned. Germany was at the mercy of the Entente Powers for the time being. But Russia was not at their mercy, and the Russian delegates did not see why any such illusion should be entertained by the Entente statesmen. When they demanded reciprocity in adjusting claims for damages and obligations contracted during the war, it did not occur to them that they were “insolent,” as Mr. Lloyd George put it, or “impudent,” as M. Barthou said. The only positive result of the Genoa conference was the Russo-German treaty. Tchitcherin and his colleagues rejected the conditions of the Entente Powers and left Genoa, declaring that they would never sign any agreement except on the basis of reciprocity in the fullest sense of the word. They did not intend to197 barter Russia’s economic independence for political recognition.

The year following the Genoa Conference was one of rebuffs and disillusion for Russia in her attempt to secure recognition from the Entente Powers and the United States. Up to the Genoa Conference it had seemed as if the Moscow Soviet was going to win out in the fight for re-entrance into the family and councils of the great powers. Great Britain and Italy had modified their original attitude; and after the conference France appeared to be considering the negotiation of a trade agreement. The French were greatly exercised over the Russo-German treaty, and the French press began to warn the Government that it would be foolish to allow Germany and Great Britain to secure a favored commercial position in the country that had been so long and so intimately connected with France. From the very fact of the large French investments, was the policy followed at Genoa a wise one? And could France afford to stand by and make no effort while Berlin established intimate relations with Moscow? M. Herriot, senator and former mayor of Lyons, made a visit to Moscow, which was not unfavorably commented upon in newspapers that had been most bitterly anti-Bolshevist. Those Frenchmen who were interested in the Near East kept insisting that France could198 not afford to let Soviet Russia become too powerful at Angora any more than at Berlin.

The olive branch was withdrawn, however, soon after the opening of the Lausanne Conference. French statesmen felt that Tchitcherin was a potent factor for mischief with the Turkish delegation, and should at no costs be allowed to have any say in the conference. The encouragement given by Russia to Germany in the passive resistance in the Ruhr demonstrated the futility of the hope entertained for a few months that a rapprochement with Russia might prove politically and commercially advantageous to France.

Great Britain and France stood together in deciding to exclude Russia from active participation in the Lausanne Conference with the approval of the new government in Italy. The Fascisti had always been anti-Bolshevist, and Mussolini reversed the policy of his predecessors. Tchitcherin was told that Russia would be allowed to sign the convention concerning the Straits, to be embodied in the new treaty with Turkey, but could have no part in drafting the convention or in discussing other provisions of the treaty. Since Russia was more interested in the Lausanne decisions than any other great power, the policy of refusing her active participation in making the treaty, especially the clauses relating to the199 Straits, angered the Russians. They became a powerful factor in encouraging Ismet Pasha. The conference broke up. The Entente Powers were incensed, and did not invite Russia to send a delegation when the conference met again in April, 1923. Notwithstanding this the Soviet minister at Rome was ordered to Lausanne, where he was assassinated in a restaurant. This tragedy led to a renewed declaration that whatever agreement was reached at Lausanne would be considered null and void by Russia.

At the same time public opinion all over the world was aroused because of the execution of two high dignitaries of the Roman Catholic Church in Russia, and the persecution of Orthodox clergy, following demonstrations against religion in Petrograd and Moscow that were reminiscent of what had happened in Paris during the French Revolution. Moscow became embroiled also with Great Britain over fishing rights on the Mourman coast and alleged infractions of the agreement to refrain from nationalist propaganda in Asia. The British Foreign Office sent an ultimatum, threatening to break off trade relations. Tchitcherin answered, requesting a new conference to discuss moot questions.

In the last year of the World War the Bolshevist movement failed to carry with it Finland, the Baltic provinces, Poland, and Bessarabia. The200 Ukraine was a battle-field for nearly two years. In this the largest, wealthiest, and most populous of the republics that proclaimed their separation from the empire following the 1917 revolution, the Bolshevists, from the beginning of their rule, managed to keep a close connection with Moscow. The fiction of separate national existence was maintained, and Ukrainia had her own delegations at peace conferences and in whatever dealings Russia had with the outside world. But, as in the Caucasus, the term “Federated Soviet Republics” did not mean real independence. Moscow came more and more to dominate as Petrograd had done in Czarist days. This held true also in Siberia as the Bolshevists gradually won back for Russia the vast regions from Samara to Vladivostok.

Throughout 1919 Soviet Russia was at war with Finns, Esthonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. The Finns were in a fortunate geographical position, and had behind them a separate national existence which made comparatively easy the formation of their state. The principal difficulty with the Soviets, once the Bolshevist insurrection had failed in the interior of Finland, was the fixing of the frontier. Conditions in the other three Baltic provinces were complicated because there were no historic frontiers, and Lithuanians and Poles were both claiming the district201 of Vilna, the majority of whose inhabitants were neither Lithuanians nor Poles but White Russians. Also, the Entente Powers tried to use Esthonia and Latvia as bases for fomenting and launching counter-revolutionary movements. Russia would probably have succeeded in Bolshevizing Esthonia and Latvia, and in winning the support of Lithuania, had it not been for the hostility of these Baltic races to Bolshevist economic doctrines and for the failure of the Bolshevist armies to subdue Poland. Moscow concluded treaties with her four former Baltic provinces, recognizing their independence, and concentrated her attention upon Poland.

The one great military disaster of Soviet Russia has been the sudden change from victory to defeat in the drive against Warsaw in the summer of 1920. Polish delegates had already appeared at Minsk to conclude peace upon favorable terms when the fortune of arms changed. The Russian armies were routed, and Moscow changed rôles with Warsaw. The would-be dictators of peace had to accept harsh terms. The Treaty of Riga, signed on October 12, 1920, is discussed elsewhere. It gave Poland a boundary far east of the line proposed at the Paris Conference, which the friends and allies of Poland had so drawn as to include all the territory that might be regarded, on the most liberal calculations,202 as having “an indisputably Polish ethnic majority.” Poland exacted of Russia fifty-five thousand square miles, inhabited by seven million people, of whom only 4 per cent were Poles. In addition to this loss of territory, the Russians were required to reimburse the Poles with gold for requisitions made during the war and to return to Poland historic treasures, archives, pictures, and manuscripts that had been in Russian state museums since 1772.

There was historic justice in these restitutions, and the Bolshevists did not resist the demands. But the terms of the Treaty of Riga incensed the Russian intellectuals, who hate Poles worse than Bolshevists. The defeat before Warsaw, far from causing the Moscow Soviet to collapse, resulted in rallying round Lenin, especially for the army, elements whose support he had not before been able to command. The territorial greed of Poland, afterward demonstrated to the disadvantage of the Ukrainians by the incorporation of Eastern Galicia, increased the hatred of the Russians and contributed in large measure to the new nationalism which has become so unexpected a development in the Soviet régime.

Czechoslovakia, created by the Peace Conference without consulting Russia, has managed to keep on good terms with her big Slav cousin. The Czechoslovak Legion did great harm to the203 Bolshevists in Siberia, but, as it had been launched before the birth of Czechoslovakia, the Prague Government was not held responsible for it. During the Russian drive on Poland in 1920 Czechoslovakia, like Germany, declared her neutrality. The premier, Dr. Benes, like Premier Nitti of Italy, believed that the Bolshevists could not help being recognized as the party indisputably in the saddle. Czechoslovak policy, therefore, dictated the wisdom and prudence of de facto relations with Russia; and after the Genoa Conference Prague and Moscow exchanged trade missions, with diplomatic immunity and the right to issue passports.

After the collapse of Germany, Rumania had renounced the Treaty of Bucharest and received delegates in her Parliament, elected by a Bessarabian assembly, which had declared the union of this Russian province with the Rumanian Kingdom. In March, 1920, the union was recognized by the Entente Powers without consultation with Russia. This was one of the most important decisions taken by the former allies of Russia. For it was the first one by which they arrogated to themselves the right to dispose of a Russian province summarily. Moscow, of course, declared the decision null and void, and the status of Bessarabia has yet to be definitely settled.

204 In this brief survey I have tried to show how the question of Russian national unity has not been subordinated to the Bolshevist régime but has rather dominated it. The economic theories of Bolshevism died of their own inherent impracticability. In view of the policies adopted by the Entente Powers, the idealistic world policy of the Bolshevists had to give way to aggressive nationalism. Russia is becoming again a capitalistic country. She has strong reasons for insisting upon a revision of the peace settlements, and she is slowly building up her army and her international affiliations with the intention of demanding a new deal, in which her interests as a great power will be considered as equal to those of the other great powers, not as a matter of right or logic, but because her force will once more match the force of other great powers.

205

Without laying stress upon the influence of the Entente promises to free and defend small nations, none can understand the situation that has arisen since the armistices in the territories of the former Hapsburg, Romanoff, and Ottoman Empires. These were the alternatives before the Paris peacemakers: treating all subject nationalities alike, in a spirit of impartial justice, with the idea of establishing a tolerable new world order; or blowing hot or cold upon the aspirations and claims of subject nationalities, with the aim of advancing the particular selfish interests of the strongest members of the conference.

The inability of President Wilson to resist the pressure brought to bear upon him by his European colleagues made the latter choice inevitable. Had it been possible for Great Britain, France, and Italy to agree upon a common policy by mutual sacrifices and compromises and a delimitation of spheres of influence, they could have played favorites among the small nations and emancipated206 races, and played them to win. The political organisms would have endured as Entente statesmen created them, and the frontiers as Entente statesmen drew them. But because those whose combined forces alone could have established peace have followed divergent and conflicting policies and do not play the same favorites, not a single new frontier line in central and eastern Europe and in western Asia is as yet definitely settled.

The first examples of independent action, in defiance of the treaties and the agreement to act together, was the seizure of Fiume by the Italian irregulars soon after the Treaty of St.-Germain was signed. Gabriele d’Annunzio demonstrated how easy it was to resist both Supreme Council and League. Then General Gouraud, officially responsible to France, violated spirit and letter of Article XXII of the Covenant by seizing Damascus. The unwillingness of members of the Council of the League to abide by the Covenant led to other breaches of good faith and disturbances of the precarious peace. For lawlessness breeds lawlessness. How can the great powers expect smaller states to respect principles of international equity which they themselves ignore? Refusing to recognize the authority of the League and the binding character of an armistice entered into by his own government, the Polish207 General Zeligowski invaded Lithuania in October, 1920, took possession of the capital, Vilna, and gave battle merrily to the Lithuanians. Because he knew that he had Poland and France behind him, Zeligowski had no fear of being called to account. The Poles did the same thing in Upper Silesia a year and a half later. The Lithuanians in January, 1923, made a coup d’état in Memel, against which the Poles cried loud and long.

The Zeligowski escapade accelerated the whirl of the international whirlpool more than those of d’Annunzio and Gouraud. For this refractory general mixed things up and discredited the League in the most dangerous spot in Europe. Differences between Jugoslavs and Italians, and between Arabs and French, did not threaten so seriously the general peace as events in the border-land of Germany, Russia, and Poland. The support Poland gave to Zeligowski—or, at least, her failure to suppress him, as Italy finally did d’Annunzio—jeopardized the existence of Poland. For among the border states of the Romanoff and Hohenzollern Empires it is either live and let live or repartition. Unless one believes that the German and Russian races have been crushed into impotence, Occidental Europe will play a losing game in establishing Poland as the lone sentinel, at the expense of her neighbors, between208 Germany and Russia. In debating the permanent success of France’s occupation of the Ruhr, Russia is the unknown factor. And whether Russia will or can help Germany depends fully as much upon the new Baltic republics as upon Poland.

Finland had a good start over her less fortunately situated sister republics. During the war she was not a battle-ground, and when the Petrograd revolution precipitated the collapse of the Russian Empire the Finns were able to proclaim and maintain their independence. They were off in a corner by themselves and not on the path to the place where the Bolshevists wanted to go. No other state laid claim to any portion of their territory other than the Aaland Islands. They were able to harp back to the Treaty of Vienna, which had stipulated the preservation of the integrity and autonomy of the Duchy of Finland, and had sanctioned only a personal union with the Russian Empire. The Czar was to be Duke of Finland. The Finns argued with reason that the disappearance of the Czar annulled ipso facto the union with the Russian Empire. This paved the way to a speedy recognition of the independence of Finland by the Entente Powers and neutrals, and the admission of Finland to the League of Nations.

The successive revolutionary Governments in209 Russia made no objection to the secession of Finland from the empire, but the compelling motive of speedy Entente recognition was the fact that Germany recognized Finland and had a powerful propaganda there. Before the revolution the Entente Powers had been bitterly hostile to Polish and Finnish aspirations, and this fact won Finnish sympathy for Germany. Unlike Poland, Finland had no terre irredente to claim from the Central Empires, and she therefore saw in the victory of the Central Empires her chance of breaking away from Russia. After the revolution, the Entente Powers conveniently forgot the pro-Germanism of Finland. Being able to recognize Finland without offending Russia, they promptly did so, and began to intrigue to induce the Finns to attack the Bolshevists.

Prussian influence had been strong in the Baltic countries north of the frontier of 1795 ever since the Middle Ages. Memel and Libau and Riga were German-built cities. Almost to Petrograd a nobility of Germanic origin constituted the land-owning class along the coast, and German merchants abounded in the ports. The Baltic barons fell in readily with the extension of Russian sovereignty to the Baltic Sea in Esthonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and became loyal servitors of the Russian Government and co-oppressors of the subject races. As readily, when the Russian210 armies were beaten in the World War, the Baltic barons welcomed their invading kinsmen and worked for the King of Prussia. The Russian revolution did not give the other Baltic races the opportunity it gave the Finns. The Lithuanians were under German military domination. The Latvians were in the field of military operations until the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed. The Esthonians soon had to cope with the Bolshevist movement, of which Reval, their capital, became a center.

At the end of 1917, Lithuania, like Poland, was offered independence by the Austro-Germans in exchange for a political alliance, economic advantages, and military coöperation against the Entente. Intrigue and intimidation failed. The Lithuanians not only resisted with success the pressure of their conquerors, who tried to disguise themselves as liberators, but held a national council at Vilna on February 16, 1918, which proclaimed the independence of Lithuania, declared against special favors either to the conqueror or to the former master, and set up a provisional Government. Kaiser Wilhelm first, and the King of Saxony later, tried to beguile the Lithuanians into forming an alliance with Germany. Is it conceivable that the Lithuanian leaders, who defied Germany in her hour of triumph and211 when their country was held by a German army, have been in connivance with defeated Germany?

Real liberation and the hope of statehood came to the Baltic Sea republics only after the defeat of Germany. At Vilna for Lithuania and at Riga for Latvia independence was formally proclaimed and governments set up before the Germans withdrew. The Esthonians at Reval were already under a regularly constituted independent government. There was no more reason to doubt the genuineness, permanence, and legitimacy of these national movements than in any other part of Europe. The Baltic Sea republics, ethnographically and historically, had as much right to expect from the victory of the Entente the revival of their nationhood as Poland and Bohemia.

Before the conference met at Paris, the powers of the victorious alliance entered into diplomatic relations with the Baltic Sea republics. They received accredited military missions, and their Governments had no intimation that they would be treated differently from Poland. In fact, they were assured that formal recognition of their independence and seats at the Peace Conference were withheld only because it was necessary not to discourage or discredit the anti-Bolshevist generals to whom the Entente was giving military212 aid to crush Lenin.9 As they felt that their existence depended upon the overthrow of the Moscow Soviet, or at least upon keeping Soviet propaganda away from their own countries, the Baltic Sea republics were content with informal pledges. They realized the delicacy of the situation and kept themselves in the background at Paris. On the other hand, their coöperation alone made practicable the military plans of the Entente against the Bolshevists. They allowed their territory to be used as a base of operations against Petrograd and Moscow; they received military supplies from the Entente Powers; and they were guided by the advice of the military missions in the projected campaigns against Petrograd and Moscow.

The Baltic Sea republics needed food and supplies and money. Ravaged and plundered during five years by Russians and Germans alike, they were beggars who could not choose their friends.213 Loyalty and decency did not seem to abide in Entente diplomacy any more than in that of the Germans. But the Baltic states could not break with us. As long as there was hope of killing Sovietism, they were ready to work with us. The complete disasters that attended the anti-Bolshevist movements opened the eyes of the Baltic Sea republics. Yudenitch, the Archangel republic, Kolchak, and Denikin had been induced by Entente military missions to attack Lenin. But each in succession had been left in the lurch to shift for himself when the fortunes of war changed. We were merely rooters on the sidelines. The withdrawal from Archangel was the strongest possible argument against an invasion of Russia. The plan of using the Baltic states for pulling Entente chestnuts out of the fire had to be abandoned. The military missions limited their political efforts to preventing the Baltic republics from signing peace.

The Kolchak debacle and the abandonment of the Archangel front by the Entente armies compelled Esthonia to treat with the Bolshevists. A glance at the map will convince any fair-minded man that the Esthonians had no other choice. It was peace or extinction. The Entente missions strenuously objected to the negotiations, but they failed to advance the only argument that would have counted, a definite pledge of military aid to214 the amount of two hundred thousand Entente troops to be kept in the country as long as the Esthonian Government had reason to fear a Bolshevist invasion.

The Peace of Dorpat, signed on January 21, 1920, was not evidence of Esthonian perfidy or pro-Bolshevist leanings. It was evidence of the complete military impotence of the Entente and the United States and of the failure of our blockade to destroy Sovietism in Russia. If the Esthonians, face to face with the Red armies, had refused to make peace with Lenin, relying on the “moral support” of the League of Nations, what does our common sense tell us would have happened to Esthonia? Esthonia was bitterly reproached for having signed the Peace of Dorpat by the very journals and men who, seven months later, gave Poland, in a similar plight, urgent counsels to do what they had denounced Esthonia for doing.

There is no word of condemnation for Poland because she signed the Peace of Riga in October, 1920. In fact, she was officially advised to make peace with Lenin. But abandoning the fight and establishing official relations with Moscow were used against the Baltic Sea republics as reasons for considering them pro-Bolshevist and for withholding recognition of their independence. Latvia and Lithuania had to follow the lead of Esthonia215 and Finland, and anticipated the Russo-Polish treaty by a few months. The treaties have now been published. They contain no provisions more advantageous to the Bolshevists than those of the Russo-Polish Treaty of Riga.

The British worked as strenuously as their allies to prevent Lenin from getting the Esthonians to make peace; but, once the treaty was signed, they accepted the situation and sought to make the best of it. Not being under the spell of the quixotism that seems to inspire our State Department in its foreign policy, and having no valid reason, as the French had, to maintain the integrity of Russia and refuse to deal with Bolshevism until money owed by the old régime was paid or acknowledged as a legitimate obligation, the British recognized the independence of the Baltic Sea republics and entered into diplomatic relations with them.

Italy, impatient for some solution, no matter what, of the Russian imbroglio, followed Great Britain’s lead. France did not dare to stand out against de facto recognition. To abstain from diplomatic intercourse with the Baltic Sea republics would have been to renounce the economic exploitation of these countries in favor of the British. So the Baltic representatives were received at the Quai d’Orsay, and French diplomats were then able to work at Libau and Riga and Reval to216 prevent a British trade and banking monopoly in Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia, and to throw a monkey-wrench into the works of the British naval machine which aimed at the supremacy of the Baltic Sea.

All this did not come about in a minute. The changed attitude toward the new political status quo in the eastern Baltic and toward the question of trading with Russia is due to the remorseless working of economic laws which prove in the long run more powerful than the combinazione of statesmen. Politics naturally yields to economics, for trade is the raison d’être of the foreign policy of nations. Prejudices die hard. The influences working against the stability of the Baltic Sea republics at London and Paris are still strong. French opposition among anti-Bolshevists, Russian bondholders, and amis de la Pologne is still active. A reactionary group in Great Britain is ready to sacrifice the Lithuanians, Latvians, and Esthonians to whatever Russian Government may be able to stamp out Bolshevism and displace Lenin and his associates. The Russians who pulled the strings for the Entente in the various anti-Bolshevist fiascos still watch the development of the Baltic situation and refuse to admit any diminution of “integral Russia.” Polish propaganda ridicules the right of the Baltic races to separate existence.

217 Under these conditions, the observer of European international politics who believes in a square deal for everybody deplored the Colby note of August 10, 1920. None questioned the good faith of Mr. Colby and his associates in their anxiety to convince the Russian people of our detachment and good will and to try to reconcile implacable opposition to Bolshevism with affection for Russia. The State Department undoubtedly meant well and thought it was making a masterly move; but one does not need to go further than the “Encyclopædia Britannica” to convince oneself, by glancing over the admirable summaries of historical facts from the best sources, of Mr. Colby’s unfairness and inconsistency in announcing in the same document that the policy of the United States was to preserve at all costs “Russian integrity” and at the same time to maintain Poland’s territorial integrity by “the employment of all available means.”

After studying the formation of the two political organisms of 1914, Austria-Hungary and Russia, Mr. Wilson’s note of September 7, 1918, to the Austro-Hungarian Government and our subsequent American policy appear a curious—and typically Anglo-Saxon—mixture of idealism and expediency. Did not the Romanoffs as much as the Hapsburgs build their empires upon the ruins of small races of alien blood and institutions218 and religion? If the moral sense of the world demands the liberation and restoration to nationhood of races in slavery to Austrians and Hungarians, how could Mr. Colby declare that the policy of our Government stands for the return to slavery of nations whose life was extinguished by the Russians? We asked the blessing of God upon our arms to assure us the victory because we were fighting for humanity. In our prayers we put no limit on our philanthropy.

On July 4, 1918, when President Wilson received the representatives of subject races at Mount Vernon, he made a solemn pledge in the name of the American people to all subject races. A Lithuanian stood with the others before Washington’s tomb. Neither in that speech nor in any other did Wilson say, “You understand, of course, that the victorious Allies mean to free and restore only the subject races whose freedom and restoration will be at the expense of our enemies and to their confusion.” Had he said this, it would have been a manly confession—to avoid false hopes and false pretenses—of what was afterward evident at the Peace Conference, that the yearning for humanity was a sham and the proclamation of the doctrine of self-determination a falsehood. The moral issue was simply buncombe to make people feel good and to arouse them against the Germans. Because races were conquered219 by the Romanoffs, have they less right to freedom than if they were conquered by the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns?

When we read carefully the Colby note, which was meant to justify the refusal of the State Department to follow the example of our associates in recognizing and dealing with and helping the Baltic Sea republics, we challenge its logic as well as its misrepresentation of the American idealism expressed by President Wilson during the war. Poland and Finland were portions of “integral Russia”; so was Russian Armenia; so was Bessarabia. Without consulting Russia, we recognized the independence of Poland, Finland, and Armenia, and agreed to the inclusion of Bessarabia in Rumania.

The State Department expert will respond that Poland and Finland had a special status under the Treaty of Vienna. Why go back in regard to Russia only to the Treaty of Vienna? In making the Treaties of Versailles and St.-Germain we canceled the Treaty of Vienna. We ignored this treaty and all other treaties in dealing with subject races of Austria-Hungary and Germany. The attempt to justify partiality of treatment between Poland and the Baltic Sea republics on the ground of the Treaty of Vienna fails even if we did accept the Treaty of Vienna as the law and the prophets. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania220 enjoyed an individual status in the Russian Empire by virtue of arrangements made before the Napoleonic period and not infringed upon until 1830. The charter of Lithuania was not finally abrogated until 1848, and the title of Grand Duke of Lithuania was assumed by the Russian Czar on a parity with that of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland at coronations. This acknowledgment of the separate identity of Lithuania in the empire was never given up. The late Nicholas was crowned Grand Duke of Lithuania.

From a historical point of view the American State Department had no ground to stand upon in regarding Lithuania as a Russian province and at the same time holding that Poland is an independent kingdom. The relations of the two countries toward the Russian Empire are strikingly alike. Both lost their independence through the partitions of the eighteenth century, after having been for centuries great and flourishing empires. Both suffered horribly from czardom during the nineteenth century. Both were battle-grounds during the late war.

Commander Gade, an American reserve naval officer who represented us in the Baltic provinces, justified the non-recognition policy on practical economic grounds. He maintained that these countries could not exist independently, and ought not be to encouraged in their aspirations for221 nationhood, because Russia needs them as an economic outlet to the sea, while much of their prosperity must come from transit trade. Commander Gade advanced this point of view earnestly and plausibly. It appealed to American common sense, which believed that in union there is strength.

But we forget the Treaties of Versailles and St.-Germain. One may have his own opinion about the advisability of the policy of émiettement (breaking in pieces) of political organisms that represented the economic evolution of past centuries. We are committed, however, to just that policy. It is too late to question it. I have never been an unreasoning and sentimental pleader for the doctrine of self-determination, but I have maintained, as a student of nationalist movements, that the effort to limit the application of self-determination to races whose liberation helps the fancied interests of a few great powers is disastrous and makes impossible the establishment of peace.

Political expediency is never more than a temporary makeshift. Old problems are solved only by creating new ones. It stands to reason that we cannot in one breath lop off frontier provinces from Germany on the ground of the alien character of their inhabitants and destroy the Hapsburg Empire on the ground of the right of its various elements to an independent existence, and in the222 next breath tell other, and neighboring, subject races that they have no future outside of the Romanoff Empire. Lithuania has a better economic raison d’être than Poland and Czechoslovakia. Lithuania and the other Baltic Sea republics have precedents that refute the argumentation of Gade and our State Department, not only in regard to their right and ability to exist independently of Russia, but also independently of one another.

If the reader will take the map of Europe, look at the location of the German Empire, follow its river-courses in relation to Belgium and Holland, and then compare the similar situation of Russia in relation to Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia, he will readily see how the Gade position, which our State Department foolishly adopted, resembled the position of German economists toward Belgium. The fact of standing between a great empire and the sea is no reason to deny the right of a people to nationhood. The Dutch and a part of the Belgians are very much closer to the Germans racially than the Lithuanians and Latvians are to the Russians and Poles. Had we not definitely scotched the access-to-the-sea argument for a big fellow’s crushing the life out of a little fellow? It is disconcerting to see it crop up in our own country in official circles. The other two parts of the Gade economic argument223 are also refuted by Belgium and Holland. These countries have existed economically, flourished, and been able to defend themselves against Germany, England, and France. And they have existed now for nearly a hundred years as separate entities. Why should not Baltic Sea states get along as North Sea states? The Baltic Sea already has little states less extensive in territory and some of them less populous than the new Baltic Sea republics.

But Lithuania, Latvia, and Esthonia, by asking for the recognition of their independence, did not close the door upon the possibility of a Russian federation among themselves. In this time of upset and confusion they asked simply for a free hand to look out for their own interests. As Russian provinces, with no separate international status, they could resist neither Bolshevists nor Russian reactionaries. They would be in the plight of the rest of Russia now, and to-morrow, when the reaction comes, they would have to submit to a return to the old intolerable conditions, with alien landowners and alien office-holders grinding the life out of them.

The Baltic Sea republics may develop into vigorous independent States, or they may return to membership in the political organism of a new and regenerated Russia; but in the meantime they have to live, and when the moment for the reconstitution224 of integral Russia comes these subject races will know by experience whether independence is possible or preferable from an economic point of view, and will be able to lay down political and social stipulations if they feel that it is wisest to go back to Russia.

We have discussed at length the attitude of the United States toward the plea of the Baltic Sea republics for recognition to illustrate the difficulties our country encounters in taking sides in questions that concern Europe. The European powers back or oppose the aspirations of small states and peoples in accordance with their own well defined national interests. The United States has no such interests. The policies we adopt upon misapprehension or misinformation, as in the case of the Baltic Sea republics, do us no good, and do others much harm. In the end they do us harm. Having no vital interests to guide us, we should abstain from European questions or let ourselves be controlled by definite principles which we apply alike in all cases.10

Since 1921 the progress of the Baltic Sea republics has been gratifying. They have proved their ability to live alone. Lithuania alone has been in hot water because she has been unable to225 get a square deal in her dispute with Poland over Vilna. The attitude of the League of Nations toward Lithuania has been disheartening, and has proved that the Council of the League is not an impartial body, dispensing justice among nations for the common good of all, but a group of statesmen furthering special interests. The dispute between Lithuania, the victim, and Poland, the aggressor, has not been handled on its merits, but has been used as one of a number of pawns in the game of compromise between France and Great Britain.

The facts of the case are these: When the League of Nations took over the adjudication of the frontier between Poland and Lithuania, both countries agreed to an armistice, and the line between the opposing armies was drawn by the League of Nations. Within a month after this agreement was signed, the Poles violated the armistice, made a surprise attack, and in a few days not only occupied the disputed frontier territory but went a long distance beyond and seized Vilna, the capital of Lithuania.

The methodical preparation for this move had long been observed by the Lithuanians, but when Mr. Veldemar pointed out to the Council of the League that Poland was preparing to anticipate by violence the award, he was assured that this would not be allowed. After the coup, the Lithuanian226 Government received no satisfaction from the Council. The Polish Government denied responsibility for Zeligowski and asserted that his army was composed of men from the disputed territory. The League of Nations finally agreed to settle the matter by means of a plebiscite, but included in the plebiscite the district of Vilna. To guarantee a fair vote, the plebiscite area was to be occupied by an international body of troops.

Russia intervened in the question. This was to be expected. Russia’s rights and interests in the relations between Poland and Lithuania are far more important than those of any state in the League of Nations. We might say, in fact, that it was folly on the part of the League of Nations to believe that territorial matters of this sort could be settled without consulting Russia. Russia has treaties of peace with both Poland and Lithuania. Her Government has been virtually at war with the Governments controlling the League of Nations. These Governments did all in their power for several years to destroy the present Russian Government. Russia, therefore, declared that the League of Nations had no business to interfere in matters that concern Russia and her neighbors, with whom she is at peace. The terms of the treaties between Russia and Poland and Lithuania have nothing to do with the League of Nations, and their interpretation and execution227 is a matter of direct negotiation between Russia and her neighbors.

Consequently Russia served notice on Poland that the presence of the Zeligowski troops in Lithuania, beyond the lines agreed upon in a Treaty of Riga, was a violation of that treaty, and that Poland must withdraw her troops. At the same time the Russian Government warned Lithuania that the presence of troops of the League of Nations would not be tolerated. Russia pointed out that the experiences of the last few years had given her reason to believe that the presence of foreign troops at Vilna could not but be a menace to her security.

The Entente Powers and the United States were afraid to let the League of Nations take a step full of embarrassment for them. If Lithuania is a province of Russia, the de facto Russian Government is justified in intervening to prevent Poland, with or without the help of the League of Nations, from alienating territory from the Russian Empire. Such action would be in accordance with the Colby note of August 10, 1920; for in this case Lenin would be acting not as a Bolshevist but as a patriotic Russian, to defeat a scheme of Poland, with foreign aid, to grab more Russian territory. On the other hand, if Lithuania were independent, why should she not receive full recognition of the new status? The Soviet228 was equally unwilling to have the question come to a show-down, because of its determination not to become involved in a new war.

So Poland and Lithuania agreed to negotiate directly, with M. Hymans of Belgium as mediator. When the representatives of the two countries met at Brussels, M. Hymans, supposedly acting for the League of Nations but in reality following a course dictated by the desire to help Belgium and France reach an understanding in regard to the German reparations question, proposed that Lithuania be divided into two cantons, and the whole country put under a joint council for foreign affairs including Lithuanian and Polish members. In addition, Lithuania was to pool her army with that of Poland. It was really a proposal for the extinction of Lithuanian independence and was refused in May, 1921. For two years the League of Nations has tried to impose upon Lithuania a boundary which accepts as a fait accompli the violation of the armistice and the seizure of Vilna by Zeligowski.

After the French and Belgians invaded the Ruhr in January, 1923, the Lithuanians decided that the time had come to settle the Memel question. The Port of Memel, with a strip of territory along the Niemen River, was detached from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, with the intention of making it a port for Lithuania as229 Danzig was made a port for Poland. The territory was ceded to the Allied and Associated Powers, and was taken over by the French. The award to Lithuania was not made, and it was suspected by the Lithuanians that France intended to manœuver, after the failure of the Hymans proposition, to give Memel to Poland. In this way East Prussia would be cut off from Russia. Taking a leaf from Zeligowski’s book in January, 1923, Lithuanian “irregulars” occupied Memel, disarmed the French garrison, and proclaimed the union of Memel with Lithuania. Confronted with a deadly parallel, the Entente Powers did not have the face to tell the Lithuanians that they could not act toward Memel as the Poles had acted toward Vilna. A month after the Lithuanians had seized Memel, they were confirmed in their possession of it by the Council of Ambassadors at Paris.

This is only one of many illustrations of the importance of having force at your disposal if you hope to survive in post-bellum Europe. Since the Treaty of Versailles, from the Baltic to the Bosphorus, all decisions, all changes, have been made by and in favor of the people possessing arms and using them.

Despite the political confusion of the last six years, the new Baltic Republics have succeeded remarkably well in establishing their claim to230 recognition as independent states on a permanent footing. What may happen when Germany and Russia again become powerful none can predict. It is hardly possible, however, that any of these states will return to Russia unless German policy demands this solution of the Baltic question, which is most unlikely. Because of their higher level of civilization and their literacy, the Baltic peoples survived Russianization in the old Romanoff Empire. Since the World War Finland has been able to make arrangements to refund her debt to the United States, and the three other countries have all been able to balance their budgets. Financially and in healthy trade prospects the Baltic Republics are better off than any of the new states that have come into being as a result of the World War, with the possible exception of Czechoslovakia.

231

When the European war raised the question of subject nationalities, Entente propagandists ignored the oppression and the aspiration to independence of other peoples save those under the yoke of enemy countries. The censorship, rigorously enforced in France, forbade discussion of the hopes of the Poles or even allusion to them. The Poles had no friends in Entente official circles, and Americans regarded the resurrection of Poland as a dream. The right of the Poles to recreate their political unity and national life could not be encouraged so long as Russia was a member of the Entente. Self-determination was a war weapon and not an honest profession of faith in an ideal. When every nerve was strained to bring Germany to her knees, it would have been folly to discuss matters tending to undermine the solidarity of the Entente coalition. Had the revolution not occurred, had Russia remained in the war to the day of victory, the Poles would have had as little attention at the Peace Conference as Ireland and Egypt received.

232 The resurrection of Poland was the result, not of German encouragement of Polish aspirations, and not of the victory of the Entente Powers, but of the Russian revolution. The consideration shown the Poles at the Peace Conference and since cannot be explained by the affection of the French for the Poles. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Poles were sacrificed to the exigencies of international politics, and none of the great powers was a worse offender than France. Three times, in 1814, in 1830, and in 1863, the Poles had been left in the lurch by the French, after having been encouraged to defy Russia; and the Third Republic pursued the policy of sacrificing the Poles to the Russian alliance. This situation changed only when France became an enemy of Russia. Then Polish aspirations were encouraged. When Russia deserted the Entente, France decided that Poland must be resurrected to take the place of Russia in the alliance against Germany. That Poland might be a strong ally, France backed the Poles to the limit in their territorial demands, and has succeeded in making the new Poland a nation of thirty millions, larger by far than any of the other states emerging aggrandized or with recovered independence from the World War.

When the Russian revolution had made encouragement of the hopes of the Poles a diplomatic233 possibility for the Entente, I heard M. Roman Dmowski, at the Comité National d’Etudes in the Cour de Cassation, set forth the aspirations of Poland. M. Dmowski spoke as if two racial units alone, Russians and Poles, faced each other from the Baltic to the Black Sea. He limited the problem of the future of the border-lands of Russia and the Central Empires to the recognition of Poland’s independence and the backing of Polish claims at the Peace Conference. He did not mention the Lithuanians and the Ukrainians. This was the beginning of a policy that has guided the Polish attitude toward the eastern frontiers of their state. The Poles insisted in the west on the inclusion of every district inhabited by Poles. In the east they regarded the ethnographical argument as of no importance.

From the moment they had a hearing the Poles began to claim all the Russian border-lands, including Lithuania, as part of historic Poland. Ukrainians and Lithuanians, however, asserted that they, too, had ruled over these lands at one time or another. The Lithuanians denied ever having been conquered by the Poles or having formed more than a personal union with the Polish state, and declared that they were victims of the partitions of the eighteenth century, not as a part of Poland, but as an independent state. The historic argument applied to the Russian border-lands234 is like that used in the Balkan states in rival claims to Macedonia. Each in turn had at one time been the upper dog and had owned the disputed territories.

The ungenerous attitude of the Poles toward their neighbors has been one of the most disheartening phenomena of the World War’s aftermath. One would think that they, having suffered so much at the hands of their masters, would instinctively refrain from playing the detested rôle themselves. But as soon as they had a chance they demonstrated that they had learned only too well how to employ the brutal methods of their own conquerors. As Russians and Germans had acted toward Poles, so Poles began to act toward Lithuanians and Ukrainians. We remember how the Poles cried out against the refined cruelty and the diabolical ingenuity of the colonization schemes of their Prussian masters. The laws under which they suffered in Posnania have been the inspiration of laws adopted by the Polish Diet to be applied against embarrassing majorities in the border districts of the new Poland.

Ever since the Poles found that they were going to receive back their freedom, their territorial appetite has known no bounds, and it has increased with eating. Each successive triumph in getting a strip of territory from a neighbor has been followed by new demands. A study of the already235 delimited and still disputed frontiers of Poland cannot fail to make one pessimistic about the chances of a durable peace in eastern and central Europe. The Poles have taken on as enemies all their neighbors, Czechoslovaks, Ukrainians, and Lithuanians, as well as Germans and Russians. On every frontier they have vigorously insisted upon as much land as they could grab, regardless of the wishes of the inhabitants. The state they have formed contains so many alien elements in geographical juxtaposition to “brothers of blood” that it is bound to be seriously affected when irredentist movements get under way.

During the first two years of the World War Russian and Austrian Poland was a battle-ground for the German and Russian armies. The Socialist and Radical elements among the Poles, whose headquarters were in Galicia, did all they could to get Russian Poles to desert and fight for the Central Empires. After the Austro-German conquest of Russian Poland, the Poles were willing to throw in their lot with the Central Empires, provided Germany equally with Austria would consent to make the sacrifices necessary for the resurrection of the old Kingdom of Poland. But the Germans were unwilling to make any promises. After much parleying the independence of Russian Poland only was decreed on November 5, 1916. The Russian Poles were236 grateful to Germany for having freed them from the yoke of Russia, but they resisted the attempt of Germany to raise an army for use against the Entente Powers. During 1917 and 1918 resentment against Germany increased to the breaking-point, especially since the power of Russia was no longer to be feared. Germany became what Russia had been at the beginning of the war, and the victory of the Entente Powers, now that the alliance with Russia was terminated, became for all the Poles the hope of salvation.

In November, 1918, General Pilsudski, a Lithuanian Pole, who had been a prominent Socialist leader, an officer in the Austrian army in the early part of the war, and the creator of the Polish Legion, was released from a German prison, where he had been placed in 1917. He returned to Warsaw and resumed the command of the Legion, which had secretly retained and developed its organization after Pilsudski’s arrest. Holding the military force, it was in Pilsudski’s power to constitute a government. He became the head of the state at the end of 1918, and had the good sense to consent to the appointment of Paderewski as premier, with the idea that the celebrated pianist, best known of all Poles in Europe and America, would be the ideal man to head the delegation to the Peace Conference. But at home Pilsudski was very frank in expressing his237 belief that after the peace negotiations were over only a Socialist Government, with a program of constructive democratic reform, could retain authority in the state. The country was facing a Bolshevist invasion, however, and the Paris negotiators needed united support. So internal politics was kept in the background until after the Treaty of Versailles and its supplementary treaty, resurrecting Poland, were signed.

Reconstituted Poland received very liberal frontiers on the west at the expense of Germany, with a corridor to the Baltic Sea, thus cutting off East Prussia from the rest of Germany. Danzig was made a free city under the protection of the League of Nations, despite its purely German population; but it was to be included in the Polish customs frontiers, and its foreign relations were to be under Polish control. Later plebiscites were to determine whether Upper Silesia and two districts of West Prussia should remain with Germany or be handed over to Poland. The Treaty of St.-Germain gave western Galicia to Poland, and the Entente Powers agreed that eastern Galicia should have autonomy for twenty-five years, under the protection of Poland, after which its inhabitants were to decide their destiny by a plebiscite. The Poles had expected to obtain a clear title to eastern Galicia, considering of no importance the fact that they were hardly more than238 10 per cent of its population of over three millions. The outcry raised by the nationalists at Warsaw over eastern Galicia forced Paderewski to resign the premiership. His stormy year in politics had accomplished much for Poland, but he himself was thoroughly discredited. He had not shown himself as good a land-grabber as his compatriots had hoped. Paderewski is back at the piano!

During the Peace Conference, and before Poland had an official status, she found herself engaged in three wars. She was fighting at the same time with the Czechoslovaks over the coke and coal of Teschen, with the Ukrainians over eastern Galicia, and with the Bolshevists over border-lands in a vast region whose political future could not be decided. The Entente Powers, wanting to maintain relations with reactionary Russian elements, had avoided fixing a Russo-Polish frontier. Any line they drew would have offended the anti-Bolshevists and the Poles alike!

The war with the Czechoslovaks was too ridiculous to last long. Both states were in the embryo. Their future was being debated at Paris. They were compelled to listen to reason, sign an armistice, and submit the dispute to the Supreme Council. Teschen was eventually cut in two, the line running down a street in the town. But the mining district and the railway went to Czechoslovakia.239 The Poles were assured that they would be compensated at the expense of Germany for this loss, if something one had not yet had can be called that. The Ukrainian war was complicated by the division of the Ukrainians into two parties. The anti-Bolshevists eventually joined forces with the Poles against the Bolshevists; and this mischance of civil war put the Ukrainians of Eastern Galicia at the mercy of Poles.

The war with the Bolshevists dragged on through the winter of 1919–20, largely because the Entente Powers felt that it might be possible to use Poland against Russia in conjunction with the Kolchak and Denikin movements. The Poles launched an offensive at the end of April, 1920, and within two weeks had advanced to Kiev. But the Bolshevists, having disposed of counter-revolutionary movements, were able to concentrate all their forces against Poland. There was a sudden change in the fortune of arms. Poland was invaded, and by the middle of August the Russians had advanced to the suburbs of Warsaw.

In the meantime the Poles had sued for an armistice. Polish plenipotentiaries went to Minsk on August 17, prepared to accept humiliating terms, which included the reduction of the Polish army to fifty thousand, the surrender of all arms and war materials over and above what was necessary for this small army, and the stoppage of war240 industries. These terms, together with the proposal for the Vistula boundary, had been transmitted to Poland by the intermediary of the British, and seemed reasonable to the British Government, which had never countenanced Poland’s inordinate territorial ambitions.

By the time the Polish peace delegation reached Minsk, the tide of battle had begun to turn. With French staff aid the Polish army made a successful counter-offensive, and the Bolshevists retreated as rapidly as they had advanced. The shoe being now on the other foot, negotiations were transferred to Riga, where on October 12, 1920, a treaty was signed as humiliating to Russia as the one the Bolshevists had intended to make the Poles accept. Ukrainia was associated with Russia in making the peace. Poland tried to avoid dealing with Ukrainia as a Soviet government, but on this point Moscow and Kiev were obdurate. It was a surprise to the world that the Moscow Soviet agreed to cede one hundred and thirty-five thousand square kilometers, which meant the loss of part of White Russia and the cutting off of Russia from Lithuania. Poland secured a corridor to Latvia, which enabled her to begin immediately a frontier dispute with that little state. Russia renounced intervention in negotiations between Lithuania and Poland, which left Lithuania at the mercy of her larger neighbor.241 The cessions in the northwest, when taken into consideration with the creation of the Baltic Republics, made still more difficult the trade communication of Russia with Germany and the rest of western Europe. In the south Poland established a common frontier with Rumania at a sacrifice on the part of Soviet Ukrainia both of a large part of Volhynia province, with a purely Ukrainian population of more than a million, and also of the claim to a union with Eastern Galicia, with three million more Ukrainians.

The cessions of territory secured by Poland under the terms of the Treaty of Riga were hailed in Warsaw and Paris as a great triumph. But when we take the Treaty of Riga and the Treaty of Versailles together it is not hard to come to the conclusion that the wild extravagance of Poland’s eastern and western boundaries, the result of the unwise abuse of temporary power, will come to be regarded as a source of fatal weakness. Add the later decisions of the Entente Powers in regard to Upper Silesia and Eastern Galicia, and we have the problem of a new country, hardly more than half of whose inhabitants are Poles, a country of thirty millions, wedged in between Russia and Germany, at the expense of both of whom Poland has been constituted and put in possession of railways and oil-wells and coal-mines and industries. Is it possible to suppose that Russia and Germany242 are rendered so permanently and completely powerless that Poland is going to enjoy the peaceful possession of what she has stolen and of what others have stolen for her?

Since the Treaty of Riga, Poland, with the backing of France, has scored three more notable territorial successes, each of which has added more alien inhabitants to the already alarmingly conglomerate electorate of the new state. In each case the decision in favor of Poland has been the result of strong-arm methods. Previous decisions, solemnly made, have been reversed when the Poles have used force.

Eastern Galicia declared its independence at the end of 1918, after the collapse of Austria-Hungary. Under the old Austrian rule its inhabitants, Ukrainians, had struggled long and successfully against the Poles and were just getting control of the country when the World War broke out. Although the cities contain mostly Poles and Jews, the province is overwhelmingly Ukrainian. The Poles have about 10 per cent and the Jews 15 per cent. In May, 1919, the Poles invaded Eastern Galicia, and in July secured from the Supreme Council the authorization to occupy the country—two months after it had been done! It was arranged that Poland should hold Eastern Galicia for twenty-five years as an autonomous243 province, and that there should be a plebiscite in 1944.

Poland began a reign of terror in Eastern Galicia, suspending the Diet and Provincial Executive on January 30, closing Ukrainian schools, suppressing Ukrainian newspapers, and conscripting Ukrainians by force into the Polish army. When the time came for elections to the Polish Diet, the army was used at the polls to prevent the people from returning Ukrainian deputies. The brutality of the Polish army and the methods of the Polish Government in Eastern Galicia are as bad as anything the Germans and Russians have ever done. This is a strong statement, but it is based upon unimpeachable testimony. I have only recently heard accounts of punitive expeditions to the villages in the Przemysl district that might have been written about Europeans in central Africa. At Przemysl the Ukrainian recruits marched handcuffed through the streets singing patriotic songs. This is how Poland is raising her armies!

Notwithstanding the determination of the Eastern Galicians to have nothing to do with their age-old enemies, on March 16, 1923, the Council of Ambassadors at Paris allotted full sovereignty over Eastern Galicia to Poland. Former Secretary Colby was in Paris, retained by the Ukrainians244 to plead their cause. But he was refused a hearing. The Ukrainians were ignored. The decision was made solely at the suggestion of France, who had received from Poland control of 50 per cent of the oil-wells and 75 per cent of the refining factories in Eastern Galicia as security for a loan of 400,000,000 francs for military purposes. As a last resort, the Ukrainians requested that the status of their country be referred to the League of Nations or the Hague tribunal. As they did not have the backing of a great power, as the Poles had, the request was ignored. This settlement of the Eastern Galician question creates a large and dangerous Alsace-Lorraine in eastern Europe. None who knows local conditions doubts that Ukrainia will eventually intervene on behalf of her “oppressed brethren,” with the backing of Russia.11

245 Poland had allowed her insatiable territorial greed to create for her another danger on the East as great as that of Eastern Galicia. We have read in another chapter how General Zeligowski violated the armistice agreement arranged between Poland and Lithuania by the intermediary of the League of Nations. Zeligowski, following the successful example of d’Annunzio, seized Vilna, capital of Lithuania. When the Lithuanian Government protested to the League of Nations, the Polish Government answered that Zeligowski had acted on his own initiative, and that Poland was not responsible for him. But Warsaw took full advantage of the breach of faith, and, again with French backing, manœuvered diplomatically so as to secure a decision of the Conference of Ambassadors, on March 15, 1923, arbitrarily dividing Lithuania in two. The Vilna district contains a mixed population, with White Russians predominating. But there are more Lithuanians than Poles, and Vilna is the historic capital of Lithuania. The decision of the ambassadors, after the League of Nations had failed to settle the question, consecrates Zeligowski’s coup de force. The Lithuanians have officially declared that they will not acquiesce in the settlement, and they warn the Entente Powers246 that “such a wrong done to the most powerful instincts of racial self-preservation may precipitate untoward events.” The reply of the Entente Powers was to give the Lithuanians authority to inflict a wrong upon the Germans at Memel such as the Poles inflicted upon them at Vilna! The Moscow Soviet, speaking for once in the name of all Russia irrespective of party, immediately warned London and Paris that the Occidental powers “are responsible for prejudice to Russian interests through decisions adopted by them without the participation of Russia and her Allies.”

The third dubious success gained by Poland since her reconstitution was the decision of the League of Nations to divide Upper Silesia after the province had voted by nearly three hundred thousand majority to remain with Germany. Before and after the plebiscite Polish bands, with the connivance of the French, overran Upper Silesia. The British and Italians on the spot protested in vain. The decision of the League of Nations, dividing Upper Silesia, awarded to Poland most of the mines and factories, which had been created by German industry and run by German engineers. To make this possible, thriving industrial towns that had given substantial majorities in the plebiscite in favor of Germany were put on the Polish side of the line. I was in Kattowitz when the transfer from French247 military occupation to Poland took place. The Treaty of Versailles did not bind the victors to make the partition in accordance with the verdict of its inhabitants. The vote was to be for “guidance” only. France stood out squarely for giving Kattowitz to Poland. Aside from the consideration of crippling Germany as much as was humanly possible, the French military authorities pointed out that Kattowitz must be taken from Germany because through this city ran the railway from Prague to Warsaw.

The Poles argued that the country-side around these German cities like Kattowitz contained a Polish peasant population, and that the large German population in the cities was due to colonization. But when I had been in Eastern Galicia, where Lemberg had a Polish and Jewish majority and the country was Ukrainian—more Ukrainian than the country districts of Upper Silesia were Polish—I was told that it was the city population that counted! Alarm for the peace of Europe and not sympathy with Germany for the loss of this rich region prompts one to denounce the decision by which people were bartered like cattle and were placed under a Government that will have great difficulty in utilizing the resources thrust into its inexperienced hands. Decisions of this sort in international questions are precisely what keep alive old animosities, and248 sow the seeds of new wars. The problems are not solved; they remain, and are aggravated.

The new frontier in Upper Silesia will give rise to countless difficulties. The provisions for the “preservation of the economic unity of Upper Silesia” will not succeed. Poles and Germans have closed the frontier to each other. They could not have done otherwise. And they have mounted guard to the detriment of any peace within the near future. An Englishman who knows Upper Silesia thoroughly told me that the country would go to smash—on both sides of the frontier—as it would be impossible to work out on a sound economic basis the coal and iron and railway readjustments made necessary with the new frontier. “It just can’t be done,” said my informant, “and one of these days we shall read despatches in the newspapers telling us that the Germans and Russians have decided to take back what is now given to Poland. And who will prevent them?”12

In contrast to the success of her neighbor, Czechoslovakia, Poland has been floundering in the mire of financial difficulties from the day of her birth. Of course, the conditions confronting249 the two new Governments were entirely different. Because Bohemia had highly organized industries that furnished most of the war materials for Austria-Hungary, the Czechoslovaks prospered throughout the war. And Czechoslovakia was not invaded. Poland, on the other hand, had been a battle-ground, and had suffered as much as northern France and Serbia from the ravages of contending armies. It is impossible to overestimate the economic damage done to Poland not only by the fighting but also by the dislocation of her industrial and agricultural life.

For all that, the natural richness of the country might easily have turned the balance in the years immediately after hostilities had not the new state taken upon itself from the very beginning the burden of military ventures and a large standing army. Ever since the end of 1918 Poland has strained every nerve to keep up a military establishment and to accomplish the various extensions of her frontiers outlined in this chapter. When territories are occupied they must be subjugated; and when they are subjugated they must be defended. Thus it is that the Polish Government has never had a chance to get a breathing-spell to put its financial house in order and attempt to balance its budget. The printing-presses have turned out paper money by the trillion. The Polish mark has gradually sunk until now it stands250 hardly better than the Austrian crown. From a financial point of view, as indicated by her exchange, Poland, although she has no national debt as an inheritance and no indemnities to pay, stands with the conquered nations. She has recently been voted a loan of 400,000,000 francs by France “for the purpose of improving Poland’s financial and economic situation so that she may resume her proper place in the European concert of nations and play the rôle to which her geographical position and her history entitle her.”

So ran the resolution adopted by the French Chamber of Deputies. But it was soon discovered that the purpose of the loan was to increase still further the Polish army and to develop Polish factories capable of producing war materials. With what result? The Polish mark is still far below the German mark in purchasing-power. That means that it has virtually no purchasing-power! Militarism is the curse of Poland, and there is no hope of economic rehabilitation until the revenues of the nation and the money she can borrow abroad are devoted to purposes of peace.

At the Peace Conference the British advocated the restriction of the frontiers of Poland to regions inhabited in large majority by Poles. They argued that the award to the new republic of provinces with alien majorities, at the expense251 of Germany and Russia, would create fatal irredentist questions. But such a Poland would have been an agricultural country, without access to the sea, and without a common frontier with Rumania. France wanted a Poland to take the place of Russia as an ally, possessing the iron and coal and oil essential to military power in the twentieth century. The French plan, for the accomplishment of which the doctrine of self-determination would have to be sponsored or ignored as it fitted the plan, called for a cordon sanitaire of allied states separating Germany and Russia.

The success of the French point of view has made the Polish republic a heterogeneous conglomeration of peoples, among whom the pure Poles have a bare majority. Aside from the millions of Germans, Lithuanians, White Russians, and Ukrainians, Poland contains the largest Jewish population in the world. The Jews in Poland are a separate people, tenacious of their language and customs, who would have furnished a serious enough internal political problem for the new republic had Poland been given her proper ethnographic frontiers. But, as the country is now constituted, the balance of power in the parliament is held by the Jewish and alien deputies. The folly of the attempt to found a Poland with universal suffrage in accordance with the French252 plan is demonstrated by the political confusion of the last four years. Poland was bound by the Minorities Treaty of June 28, 1919, to grant equality to all elements of the new state. The difficulties with the Jews were quite sufficient in themselves. But when millions of other peoples have been brought against their will into Poland, it is easily seen that the Polish Nationalists are having hard sledding.

The National Democratic party, comprising the landed gentry and the educated classes in general, who had led the independence movement, thought that it was their right to control the government. But from the beginning they had to contend with the peasant and labor and Socialist combination, which matched them in strength, and which could easily run the country by Jewish and German-Ukrainian support. Pilsudski, who retained for four years the transitional title of Chief of the State, insisted that no conservative Government could live in Poland. The natural majority was Socialist (with the peasant support), and any attempt to keep the Nationalists in the saddle, according to Pilsudski, would be futile.

The first General Election under the new constitution was held on November 5 and 12, 1922. Strenuous efforts were made in every part of the country to prevent the exercise of suffrage on the part of the new alien Minorities and the Jews.253 Despite intimidation and glaring fraud, the new Parliament did not contain a Nationalist majority. The Nationalist Right and the Populist-Socialist-Labor Left had about the same strength in both Diet and Senate, with a center group of Jews and “foreigners” holding the balance of power. The test came in the election of the first president of Poland. Pilsudski refused to run, not wanting to owe his election to the votes of Jews and Germans. Count Maurice Zamoyski, Polish minister in Paris, whose family had played a glorious rôle in Poland for centuries, was the candidate of the Right. The Left put up Professor Narutowicz, who had been living in exile at Zurich for many years, and who returned to Poland to become minister of foreign affairs after the resurrection. Zamoyski, idol of the Nationalists, was defeated.

Feeling ran high in Warsaw. For several days a pogrom was feared. Molested in the streets, the Jews took to cover. Had not the police behaved admirably there would have been serious loss of life and destruction of property. The worst offenders were not hooligans but students and older men of the so-called intelligentsia. General Haller, former commander of the Polish Corps in France during the war and later of the volunteer army that stemmed the Bolshevist advance in 1920, imprudently allowed himself to254 be drawn into the street manifestations. He addressed the students in an inflammatory manner, crying out that the Poles had been outvoted in their own country by Jews and foreigners. It was unthinkable, General Haller said, that a man like Zamoyski, who represented the noblest traditions of Poland, should have been defeated.

The new president, to prove that he was not under the control of the Left and the Jews, immediately asked the Right to form a new Government. Not only did the irritated Nationalists refuse this overture, but they absented themselves from the inauguration, and declared that they would abstain from participation in Parliament. The police had to take stringent measures to protect the members of the Diet and the representatives of foreign legations who appeared for the ceremony. The President was smuggled in. When the inauguration was over, the Nationalists formed barricades, and the police had to charge. The automobile of M. Narutowicz made slow progress back to the palace, and all along the way the first president of Poland was pelted with snow-balls and mud. Five days after he took the oath of office, he was assassinated. The crime was explained as the act of an insane man without accomplices, but there can be no doubt that it was prompted by255 the feeling aroused over the defeat of the Nationalist candidate.13

A strong revulsion of feeling followed this crime. It was realized that the very existence of Poland was at stake. General Sikorski, Chief of Staff, assumed the premiership, proclaimed the country in danger, and appealed to all parties to join in solving the crisis. Alarmed over the possibility that rioting in Warsaw might react unfavorably upon the morale of the army, Premier Sikorski was ready for strong measures. When parliament met again on December 20, and Stanislas Wojciechowski, the candidate of the Left and Center, was elected over Professor Morawski, of the University of Cracow, one of the leaders of the Right, the Nationalists decided to accept their defeat.

This sad experience was a demonstration of the256 old truth that you cannot keep your cake and eat it. Unless the elements other than Poles are barred from taking part in elections, the Polish Nationalists will never be able to get the Government into their hands. Half the Poles are supporters of agrarian reform or some kind or other of Socialism, and they place these issues above nationalism. In fact, the majority of the radicals abhor nationalism. They put class ahead of race interests. Greater Poland was a glorious dream, but its realization has meant the disillusionment of the dreamers. If Poland is to continue to exist as an independent state with its present boundaries, the landed gentry will have to abdicate their special privileges and become democratized, while the Polish Nationalists will have to abandon the notion that the privileges of Polish citizenship are the inherent right of those alone who speak the Polish language and glory in Polish traditions and culture.

257

Of the new states created by the Paris treaties, Czechoslovakia has had the most uneventful existence and is by all odds the most flourishing. In fact, it is the only one of the Succession States to the Hapsburg Empire whose political and economic life is functioning normally. When one arrives in Prague, one is immediately struck with the naturalness of the new régime. It is as if it had always been. And when one goes to the Burg and visits the offices of the new Government, which has now been functioning under the control of the same men for nearly five years, there is no feeling of coming into contact with something parvenu or inchoate or absurd. Across from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs workmen are busy on the cathedral. “When was this started?” I asked. “We have been working on this addition—in reality it is the main part of the cathedral, you know—for six hundred years.” Nothing illustrates better the spirit reigning to-day in Czechoslovakia. Freed from a bad dream, the old Kingdom of Bohemia is taking up once more the problem of258 playing an independent rôle in central Europe.

An American in Vienna told me that Czechoslovakia was “a Bologna sausage impossibly sprawling across the map,” and expressed in no uncertain terms his belief in the approaching collapse of a country “without natural frontiers and economic or geographical raison d’être and made up of a congeries of races among which the Czechs are in the minority.” An Austrian cabinet minister added, “The old racial and irredentist problems of this part of the world were not solved by the treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon; they were only transferred from Vienna to Prague.”

If one considers the question of the viability of Czechoslovakia from the strict point of view of geography and ethnography, there would indeed seem to be little hope for the future of this curiously composite state. Czechoslovakia is long and narrow, and part of her frontiers are arbitrary. Out of a population of less than 13,000,000, there are more than 3,000,000 Germans and nearly 1,000,000 Hungarians. Ruthenians or Ukrainians number 500,000. And there are Jews and some Poles. Whether the Czechs are outnumbered by “alien races” depends upon the classification of the two other branches of the Slav family in the body politic. Are Moravians and Slovaks different people from the259 Czechs? Even if they be counted as the same or similar, possessing common historical traditions, using kindred languages, sharing common aspirations, and being willing to throw their lot in with the Czechs, there is a difference in culture—a striking difference. The Slovaks and the peoples of other regions ceded by Hungary to Czechoslovakia contain a large percentage of illiterates. The Czechs in the Kingdom of Bohemia are virtually all literate. The wife of a cabinet minister told me that she had never in her life met anybody who could not read and write. What American could say the same?

President Masaryk is a Moravian, and General Stefanik is a Slovak. These two men, together with Dr. Benes, a Czech, were the leaders in securing the recognition of Czechoslovak independence, and have succeeded in retaining the confidence of their people during the formative years of the new republic. This fact in itself, however, is not indicative of a real fusion of the Slavic elements. It will be remembered that even during the war some of the most prominent Austrian statesmen were Czechs, notably Count Czernin. The Czechs make up 46 per cent of the population of the new state, and even with the Slovaks amount to only 60 per cent. The two million Slovaks have insisted upon autonomy from the very beginning of the national life, and260 only their cultural inferiority has prevented them from acting as the Croats have acted in Jugoslavia.

The greatest problem is that of the Germans, who live in a more or less compact mass in regions contiguous to Germany and Austria. Were it not for two saving factors in the situation, the natural mountain frontier separating the Germans of Bohemia from Germany and the cultural equality of the Czechs with the Germans, the presence in the body politic of a German bloc, comprising 27 per cent of the total population, would make Czechoslovakia a hopeless proposition. For, after the collapse of the Central Empires, the Germans of Bohemia declared themselves united to Austria and opposed to the bitter end the determination of the Peace Conference to put them under Czech rule in defiance of the right of self-determination. The Germans form a separate party in the Czechoslovak parliament, and use their own language in addressing the chair and in debates. They assert that they are citizens of Czechoslovakia against their will and that they had no part in forming the new constitution under which they are governed. They resent the sudden change of fortune of the Teutonic master race. Their new position is humiliating.

But powerful material considerations have led them to make the best of a bad business and to261 accept the fait accompli. Austria is in a sorry plight, and the condition of Germany is not much better. The Germans of Czechoslovakia are far better off, although politically depressed, than Germans in any other part of the world. Comparatively speaking, the country of which they are now citizens is prosperous, and they form a large enough element to be able to stand up for their rights in the new state. The danger to Czechoslovakia of containing so large a German population will come only when Germany has rehabilitated herself, or if Austria succeeds in reaching a degree of prosperity equal to that of Czechoslovakia.

On the other hand, despite the large minorities, Czechoslovakia has an excellent chance of lasting and, by a steadily increasing prosperity, making her unwilling citizens content with their lot. Czechoslovakia is the only new state formed wholly out of the Hapsburg Empire. Prague does not have the problems of Bucharest, Belgrade, and Warsaw, where peoples separated through centuries and impregnated with different cultures and radically divergent political ideals and political experience have been brought together under a new roof. Not a portion of the Czechs but all of them have had political education and have been familiar with suffrage and parliamentary life. The Czechs had their quota262 of functionaries in the Hapsburg Empire, which gives them trained men for government service. Without intending offense, one might say that the Czechs are the most promising of the newly emancipated people because they are German-trained in public life, administration, and education, as well as in business. They possess a German mentality—in the better sense of that term—and this is the reason they have made such wonderful progress in five years and present to the visitor the picture of a state functioning without confusion and possessing all that makes for durability.

From large portions of Jugoslavia and Rumania it is going to take a long time to obliterate the four centuries of subjection to Ottoman rule. Rumania and Poland have elements that remained for centuries under the Russian yoke. Bohemia was in slavery, but gentle slavery. The Slavs were discriminated against, it is true, but not in a way fatal to their cultural or economic development. The country was not partitioned, and Austrian rule could not be compared with that of Turkey or Russia. The territories that go to make up Czechoslovakia shared the prosperity of the last half-century of the Hapsburg Empire, and they contained—already developed—factories, mines, and agricultural and forest industries second to none in Europe. Mark the words263 “already developed.” When you go to Bucharest or Belgrade or Warsaw you are told what the people hope to do, and the potential wealth of the country is impressed upon you. Foreign capital is essential, and there is the constant anxiety that its introduction be not accompanied by political subserviency to the great powers and economic dependence upon them. But at Prague you do not have to visualize the future. The actual wealth of the country and its existing machinery for production are sufficient guarantees of its ability to live alone. Railways do not have to be built: they are already there. Men do not have to go through the painful stages of learning parliamentary manners, and officials are not running around madly with more good will than knowledge. Czechoslovakia is the one going concern created by the Paris Conference.

In several respects the birth of Czechoslovakia differed from that of Poland and Jugoslavia and from the formation of Greater Rumania and Greater Greece.

Alone among the smaller peoples subject to the Central Empires or influenced by them, the Czechoslovaks from the beginning of the World War made up their minds that their bread was buttered on the side of an Entente victory. Unlike the Poles and Jugoslavs, they deserted from the Austro-Hungarian armies on every occasion,264 and when they went over to the Entente they risked being shot for treason if captured when fighting in the Entente armies. They rendered appreciable services by this technical disloyalty, and before the end of the war they had under arms divisions on three battle-fronts and an army in Siberia. Their leaders who managed to escape from the country burned their bridges behind them, and those who stayed at home, like Dr. Kramar, first premier of the new state, almost lost their lives by insisting during the war upon the resurrection of Bohemia as one of the conditions of peace.

Added to loyalty to the cause of those to whom they looked for emancipation was an amazing sense of moderation, unique among the liberated peoples. Before the emancipation the Czechs were willing to be guided by the councils of the great powers, and after the liberation they took a sensible view toward minorities. They did not combat or attempt to override the decisions of the Peace Conference. Curious as it was, their new state was spontaneously formed by the recognition of the Bohemian claims to statehood by Austria just before the collapse, and by the voluntary adhesion of national councils in Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia, and Russina to the nucleus of a common government already formed at Prague. The Prague authorities gained no territory265 by conquest, and arms did not have to be used against the German and Hungarian minorities, whose incorporation in the new state was provided for by the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon.

Rumania based her territorial claims upon a definite agreement with the Entente Powers, embodied in a secret treaty, which was the price paid for her intervention. Greece relied upon Premier Venizelos’ skilful manœuvering in the mazes of Entente Near Eastern diplomacy. The Poles put their cause in the hands of France from the beginning, and, having been saved by France at the time of the Bolshevist invasion in 1920, became more convinced than ever that their salvation lay in listening to the Quai d’Orsay. The Jugoslav problem was singularly complicated by the unwillingness of the Pan-Serbs, under Premier Pashitch, to make up their minds in 1918 whether they wanted a Greater Serbia or a new state, Jugoslavia, in which old Serbia would lose her identity. The Czechoslovaks were not compelled and did not feel the inclination to seek the favor of any one great power or to play one power against another. Only in the dispute with the Poles over Teschen was there a momentary embarrassment. In all other questions the Czechoslovaks were lucky in not having their interest conflict with the ambitions of the great266 powers. They made only one serious blunder at Paris, which is reacting unfavorably against them to-day in Slovakia. That was when they agreed to include in their new state the island and mainland along the Danube east of Pressburg (Bratislava). This was awarded to them for strategic reasons, but they now see that the burden of half a million Hungarians subjects was too big a price to pay for it.

The success of Czechoslovakia in her foreign policy has been largely due to the ability and continuity in office of Dr. Benes, a Prague university professor, and a refugee in Paris during the war, who worked for years, in the face of every discouragement, to enlist the sympathy of the Entente Powers in the Czech cause. When the hour of liberation came, the Czechs had the good sense to keep Benes in Paris as delegate at the Peace Conference, and to make him minister of foreign affairs. Dr. Benes established the following basic principles of Czechoslovak foreign policy: (1) help to Austria and an economic understanding with Austria; (2) prevention of an attempt on the part of Hungary to upset the Treaty of Trianon by an alliance with Rumania and Jugoslavia, the two other beneficiaries of that treaty; (3) steadfast refusal to become the catspaw of any other power or group of powers in dealings with Russia; (4) realization of the267 patent fact that security against Germany in the future could not be obtained by any particular alliance but only by the functioning of an all-inclusive society of nations.

The Czechoslovak Government has differentiated clearly between Austria and Hungary as potential enemies. It has assumed that Italy can be relied upon never to allow an independent Austria to become a military menace, and that France is vitally interested in preventing the union of Austria with Germany. An Austria impotent militarily but still able to exist independently is what Czechoslovak interests demand, and it is comforting to realize that two great powers are natural allies in the attainment of these two objects. Because Italy mounts guard against a recurrence of Austrian militarism, Czechoslovakia can afford to see Austria flourish economically. In fact, the prosperity of Austria is an aim of Czechoslovak foreign policy, in which France can be counted upon to help, because the union of Austria with Germany would be a calamity to France and Czechoslovakia alike.

Dr. Benes maintains that the sweeping changes of the Treaty of St.-Germain were necessary to make possible an absolutely free hand for former subject peoples in dealing with former masters. It is as essential to separate Hungary from Austria along the Danube as it is for the Czechoslovaks268 to have an outlet to that river. But Czechoslovakia would be foolish to abuse her freedom of action by rendering the economic life of Austria intolerable. On the contrary, the economic and political interests of Czechoslovakia dictate making every effort to help Austria rehabilitate herself. Through Austria passes Czechoslovakia’s outlet to the Mediterranean. The two states are neighbors and must logically trade with each other. Most important of all, unless life is made tolerable for Austria she will be forced into union with Germany. And this would menace the very existence of Czechoslovakia!

The Czechoslovak attitude toward Hungary is quite different from that toward Austria. No great powers are particularly interested in holding Hungary down, and Italy is suspected of encouraging Hungary to check her nightmare of Slavic predominance on the Adriatic. East of the White Carpathians the Slovaks and the Ruthenians are not accustomed to the separation from Hungary and not altogether reconciled to it. The Czechs are not culturally inferior to the Germans; the Slovaks are culturally inferior to the Hungarians; while Ruthenian loyalty to the new state cannot be blindly counted upon. A defensive alliance with Rumania and Jugoslavia to prevent the resurrection of Hungarian military269 power was a logical move. A convention was signed with Jugoslavia on August 13, 1920, and when its value was demonstrated by the part it played to prevent the restoration of Emperor Charles to the throne of Hungary, Rumania joined the “Little Entente” on April 23, 1921.

Rumania, despite her exposed position, had to enter into the Entente counter-revolutionary conspiracies against Russia because she depended upon Entente indorsement to legalize and defend her annexation of Bessarabia. Greece had gone into the ill fated French military venture in South Russia because France insisted upon this as the price of supporting Greek claims to Thrace. Poland allowed herself to be used from the beginning against the Bolshevists because she was infeudated to French policy and could look for large territorial gains as a price of coöperation. But Czechoslovakia, although her spectacular Legion had done much to help the Allied Powers against the Bolshevists in eastern Russia and Siberia, refused flatly to keep up hostilities against the Moscow Soviet, once independence was assured. The new state turned a deaf ear to all persuasion. The Prague Government went to the length of following the example of Germany by proclaiming and forcing strict neutrality when Poland and Soviet Russia were at war. A howl went up in France in the summer of 1920 when270 the Czechs took the same stand as the British High Commissioner at Danzig, and forbade the transit of war material destined to Poland.

The Czechoslovak Government is frankly anti-Communist and has no sympathy with the Moscow doctrines. But the Czechoslovaks are not enemies of the Russians, like the Poles and the Rumanians, and they consider Bolshevism a temporary misfortune and not a crime for which the Russians are to be punished and despoiled of territories. Before the Genoa Conference Dr. Benes notified the Entente Powers and the United States that Czechoslovakia intended to make an agreement with Soviet Russia. This was done, notwithstanding French and American disapproval.

At the time Dr. Benes explained Czechoslovakia’s attitude to me as follows: “The United States can afford to take the attitude of complete non-intercourse with Moscow. But we cannot. We have our security to think of, and we want to be prepared for the trade opportunities that will open up in the future as Russia becomes stable again. Russia is one of our most promising markets. We must have a delegation at Moscow, to know what is going on in Russia, and to be ready for trade when it offers itself. Our struggle for existence, economically and politically, is271 such that we must think of the future and take Russia into our calculations.”

No country deplores more the weakness of the League of Nations and is more alarmed over what we might term international anarchy than Czechoslovakia. With her composite population and her peculiar geographic position, with impossible frontiers from the strategic point of view, she is eager for some permanent assurance of international political stability. There are only about six million Czechs. Even with the Slovaks, they number scarcely eight millions. Czechoslovakia could not exist if the Germans of Bohemia went to Germany and the Hungarians of Slovakia to Hungary. It is natural, then, that security of frontiers, based upon international agreement rather than upon force or precarious alliances, is the goal of the Czechoslovak diplomacy. This explains the move of Dr. Benes at the Genoa Conference in the summer of 1922, when he tried to get the powers to accept the most elementary of all principles, that of a universal and binding compact of non-aggression. The Czechoslovaks, not being able to defend their state, and fearing to have the defense of the treaties to which they owe their existence depend upon armies and alliances, have proposed universal and reciprocal declaration of the sanctity272 of frontiers, and want the League of Nations to become an automatic proscriber of any nation disturbing the status quo of the Paris peace settlement.

When we estimate the chances of long life for so curiously formed a state as Czechoslovakia, we have no other grounds for assuming its durability than the adoption of a program like that advocated by Dr. Benes at Genoa. If the Germans all get together none can prevent them from snuffing the life out of Czechoslovakia, especially if they are able to form once more an alliance with Hungary. Italy alone could put obstacles in the path of such a program, provided there is no world organization to maintain the frontiers of the Paris treaties.

273

The little Balkan Kingdom of Serbia was a principality under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire for half a century after its resurrection during the Napoleonic Wars. The Serbs engaged in a war with Turkey in 1876, which led to the intervention of Russia, and to the recognition by the powers of the independence of Serbia in the Treaty of Berlin. The limits of the new kingdom were so drawn as to exclude the northern part of Macedonia, which was left to Turkey, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the administration of which was entrusted to Austria-Hungary, without detaching these territories from the Ottoman Empire. The little principality of Montenegro, whose inhabitants had successfully resisted the Turks for centuries, was also declared independent by the Treaty of Berlin. In 1908, after the Young Turk revolution, Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, little Serbia succeeded in nearly doubling her territory274 and adding 50 per cent to her population at the expense of Turkey and Bulgaria. An important part of the new territory, however, contained a non-Serbian majority.

Of the Serbian-speaking peoples, known as the Jugoslavs, considerably more than half were in the Hapsburg dominions at the outbreak of the World War. The kingdom of Serbia had a population of 3,000,000 before the Balkan Wars, which added 1,500,000 more, of whom 1,000,000 by the most liberal estimate could be considered Serbs. In round numbers the Jugoslavs in 1918 were distributed as follows:

We must have these figures before us to realize the tremendous difficulties confronting the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, created by the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon.275 Greater Rumania was formed by adding between four and five million liberated Rumanians and an equal number of alien peoples to an independent kingdom already containing more than seven million Rumanians. Greater Serbia was formed by adding 8,000,000 liberated Jugoslavs and the half-million already independent Montenegrins to 4,000,000 independent Serbians. The figures alone demonstrate the difference in the problem. If the Serbians were to maintain their supremacy over the redeemed brethren, it was going to be a case of the tail trying to wag the dog.

But there is a still wider divergence between the problems of Greater Rumania and Greater Serbia than is shown by the figures. The redeemed Rumanians could be assimilated with those of the kingdom into one nation. They had a common interest in standing together against alien elements formidable in number. In Greater Serbia the Serbian-speaking elements had been separated for centuries. With radically different social and political, religious and cultural backgrounds, amalgamation was a complicated problem. Many Serbians have attempted to draw a parallel between the unification of the Italians and that of the Jugoslavs. The analogy does not hold, because the Italians were all of the same religion, they were a product of the same Occidental culture, and their social and political experience276 had not, in modern times, at least, been dissimilar. The Jugoslavs, on the other hand, had been separated since the Middle Ages by formidable barriers.

Serbs and Montenegrins are Orthodox; Bosnians, Herzegovinians, and a portion of the inhabitants of what is known as New Serbia are Orthodox, Catholic, and Mohammedan; while most of the Croats, Dalmatians, and Slovenes are Catholic. The Jugoslavs of the Hapsburg Empire are Occidentals, and have always been under the influence of Rome. Most of them escaped wholly the Ottoman yoke. They have evolved a high degree of civilization, as we Westerners understand that term, and have little except language in common with the Serbians, a people that lived for hundreds of years under the shadow of the Crescent. It was impossible to expect that the more cultivated Serbian-speaking peoples of the Hapsburg Empire should be willing to play second fiddle to a Balkan people whose manner of life and habits of mind were semi-Oriental.

When the fortunes of war began to point to an Entente victory in 1918, it would have been possible to secure the recognition of a Jugoslav state, to be formed by the union of the Jugoslav portions of Austria and Hungary with Serbia. But the Serbian Government failed to recognize the barriers of which we have just spoken, and277 aimed to use the victory as a means of aggrandizing Serbia. The new territories were to come into the existing kingdom without conditions. Premier Pashitch tried to get the Entente Powers and the United States to agree to the annexation of Bosnia by Serbia when the Austro-Hungarian armies withdrew. In the summer of 1918, when the Czechoslovak National Council was officially recognized as trustee of the future Czechoslovak Government, it was intimated that a similar step would be taken on behalf of the Jugoslavs if only Serbia agreed to throw in her lot with the proposed Jugoslavia. Rumania and Greece joined the Entente Powers in urging this course upon the Belgrade Government. Premier Pashitch refused. The golden opportunity was lost; for in October Italy declared that she would countenance no such move. When, with the break-up of the Dual Monarchy, Agram proclaimed the independence of Croatia on October 28, 1918, it was too late to arrange what would have been feasible in the summer. On November 9 the Belgrade and Agram Governments issued at Geneva a joint declaration to work together until a constituent assembly, elected by universal suffrage, should adopt a constitution for the new states, whose boundaries were as yet indefinite.

This modus vivendi, accepted at the eleventh278 hour by Pashitch, might have lasted throughout the Peace Conference had it not been for the fear of Italian aggression, which prompted the Agram Government to beg for the assistance of the Serbian army to save Laibach and Fiume from Italian occupation. In taking over the territories assigned to them by the armistice of November 3, the Italian armies acted with a high hand, suppressing the Jugoslav national movement promptly and ruthlessly. Italian nationalism was being worked up to fever heat by the propaganda to make the Adriatic an Italian lake. The Dalmatian League at Rome declared that Dalmatia was to be Italian. D’Annunzio issued an impassioned appeal for Fiume, the words of which he soon afterward proved himself able to translate into actions.

The Agram National Council’s hand was forced. Instead of waiting to arrange on equal terms with the Belgrade Government the details of union, as the Declaration of Geneva had provided, the Council proclaimed, on November 23, the union of the territories under its control with the Kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro. Three days later a national assembly at Podgoritza deposed King Nicholas and his dynasty and voted for the union of Montenegro with the new state. Prince Alexander, as regent, announced279 the birth of “free and united Jugoslavia” at Belgrade on December 1, 1918.

When the Jugoslavs appeared with a united delegation at the Peace Conference, Italy insisted that its members be acknowledged only as Serbians, acting in the name of the Belgrade Government. The union of the Jugoslav portions of the Hapsburg Empire with the Kingdom of Serbia had not been recognized by Italy, or by the other Entente Powers, for that matter;14 and, as such an event was a thing of the future, to be decided by the Peace Conference, Italy declared that she would not consent to have decisions anticipated or prejudiced by acceptance of the union as a fait accompli. Throughout the Conference Italy maintained this uncompromising attitude.

It was after issuing from a conference in which the future of the Jugoslavs was the principal topic that Mr. Lloyd George said that the peace treaties threatened “to Balkanize Europe.” The full significance of this remark is grasped when we realize that the Jugoslav cause at Paris280 was not advanced by delegates who presented a solid front and followed a consistent policy in pressing their national claims. Pashitch and his colleagues from Belgrade, dismayed by Italian opposition at times and at others more interested in the Banat of Temesvár and Macedonia than in the Adriatic, held back from whole-hearted support of Croat and Slovene claims. In their attitude toward their “redeemed brethren” the Serbs displayed curiously mixed sentiments. If one were rash enough to attempt to express the Serbian feeling in one sentence, he might put it in this way, that the Serbs possessed, in relation to the Hapsburg Jugoslavs, a superior military complex and an inferior cultural complex.

But to be fair to the Serbs one must remember their recent military achievements and the martyrdom of the World War. They had put the Serbian race in a position of commanding the respect of the world and of being listened to at Paris because of their exploits and their sufferings. Then, too, they had fought for the Entente Powers while the rest of the Jugoslavs had fought for the Central Empires. It meant a great deal to them to renounce the historic name of their country and the flag under which they had fought, and to lose their identity in a new “Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.” The change of the red-blue-white flag to a blue-white-red281 flag was even more of a renunciation. On the practical side of the question, Premier Pashitch had to think of two other considerations: Serbia, bled white, risked a new war with Italy in championing the Croat side of the Fiume question and the Slovene side of the Istrian question; and the Serbians, with a hundred years of independent existence behind them, risked being submerged in the new state with its Occidental and more highly educated Croato-Slovene majority. What leader, under these circumstances, would not have paused to weigh the alternatives of Greater Serbia and Jugoslavia? The dilemma was all the more distressing because Pashitch realized that at the best he would have to sacrifice half a million Slovenes to Italy and would thereby incur their enmity for himself and for the Belgrade Government as well!

In the midst of currents and counter-currents of sentiment and sound diplomatic common sense, the Jugoslavs whirled through the mad year of 1919, avoiding a decision as to the precise form the new state should take. Until the treaties with Austria and Hungary were signed, the Jugoslavs concentrated upon the problems demanding attention at Paris, which were (1) resisting the pretensions of Italy in Dalmatia and at the head of the Adriatic; (2) getting as much territory as possible from Austria, Hungary, and282 Bulgaria; and (3) trying to prevent the award of the Banat of Temesvár to Rumania.

Two problems of minor importance came up: (1) the repudiation by influential Montenegrins of the union voted by the Podgoritza assembly; and (2) fixing a frontier with the Albanians.

The Banat question with Rumania was compromised by a Solomonic division of the disputed territory. As we have seen elsewhere, Jugoslav ambitions in regard to Albania were thwarted by the Albanians themselves, whose success in defending their independence was followed by the intervention of the League of Nations. The Montenegrin revolt was suppressed. Serbian claims at the expense of Bulgaria were allowed in the Treaty of Neuilly. The Treaty of Trianon gave the new state generous frontiers at the expense of Hungary. The Treaty of St.-Germain provided for a plebiscite in the Klagenfurt district of Carinthia, which resulted in a victory for the Austrians. But the Paris Conference left to direct negotiations between Italy and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes the fixing of the frontier with Italy.

For eighteen months it looked as if war would break out between Italians and Jugoslavs. But the latter were not sufficiently united to make possible an uncompromising attitude toward the Italians. In violation of President Wilson’s283 ninth point in the famous Fourteen, the Jugoslavs finally agreed to sacrifice a large portion of the Slovenes, to renounce their claim to Fiume, and to agree to the incorporation of the Zara district and some of the Dalmatian islands in Italy. This compromise, called the Treaty of Rapallo, was signed on November 28, 1920. Like other compromise frontiers in the general settlement after the World War, the Rapallo arrangement created an irredentist problem more complicated and dangerous than the one it was supposed to solve. Italy was confirmed in the possession of Istria and secured a frontier in the hinterland of Trieste and the Isonzo Valley more advantageous than the frontier of the 1915 secret Treaty of London. Fiume was made a free state “in perpetuo.” Zara and its hinterland became an Italian enclave in Dalmatia. The islands of Cherso and Lussin, with “minor islands and rocks” off the Istrian Peninsula, went to Italy. Former Austro-Hungarian subjects were allowed to opt for Italian nationality, without the obligation to transfer their domicile outside Jugoslav territory. Reciprocity for Jugoslavs residing within the new limits of the Kingdom of Italy was denied.

A glance at the map will show how great a blow to the prosperity of the Slovenes and the Croats was the creation of the Free State of284 Fiume. The loss of Trieste was serious enough to the Slovenes; that of Fiume cut them off entirely from the sea; while Fiume, where the Julian and Dinaric Alps meet, is the logical outlet for Croatia, Hungary, and Slavonia. Italy justified her seizure of Fiume (the fiction of a free state is transparent) on the ground that the majority of the port’s inhabitants were Italians. If the suburb of Susak be counted as part of the city, even this claim was debatable. But the fact that Danzig’s population was over 90 per cent pure German did not weigh at Versailles against the decision to detach Danzig from Germany to make it an outlet for Poland. Memel was similarly taken from German to be later awarded to Lithuania. Here we see the application of two weights and two measures, in the case of Fiume against a state created by the Peace Conference itself! The moral of most of the decisions made since 1918 is that the supreme argument in international relations is the possession of force. Taken as a whole, the map of Europe, as redrawn since 1918, has been more influenced by the possession of superior force by its beneficiaries than any of the territorial readjustments of the nineteenth century.

Advantageous as it was, there was a loud outcry in Italy against the Treaty of Rapallo, and it has not yet been fully put into force. As I write285 these lines the Jugoslavs are vainly endeavoring in a conference at Abbazia to secure loyal fulfilment of Italian promises and to make conditions tolerable for the foreign trade of Jugoslavia.

The frontier disputes, entailing the possibility of war with Italy, Rumania, or Albania, made necessary the postponement of elections to the Constituent Assembly until November, 1920. During the two transitional years a provisional parliament of an extraordinary character had met at Belgrade. Its Serbian members were those of the Skupshtina elected in June, 1914, and the Croatian members were of the Diet elected under Hungarian rule in January, 1914; while the Montenegrin deputies were chosen by the revolutionary assembly of Podgoritza in November, 1918. The other representatives belonged to haphazard local organizations of non-official character and doubtful legality.

Internal politics singularly aided the Italians in holding out for the terms eventually embodied in the Treaty of Rapallo; and none can study the political intrigues of this period without becoming convinced that many of the Serbians, had it not been for outside pressure, would have united successfully to throw overboard the program of a Jugoslavia for Pashitch’s dream of a Greater Serbia, with an outlet to the sea at Scutari at the expense of Albania. Thanks largely to the skill286 and devotion of M. Vesnitch (Serbian minister at Paris during the World War and the Peace Conference), who assumed the premiership at a critical moment, the various elements among the Jugoslavs were brought finally to an agreement by which the election for a Constituent Assembly could be held. It was a sign of the weakness of the new state, however, that the non-Slavic populations were not allowed to vote, although they were about 20 per cent of the electorate. Premier Vesnitch realized that it was going to be difficult enough to form a working assembly of Jugoslavs alone, without the added confusion of alien elements!

In Croatia, the peasant leader Raditch, who had been in prison for advocating a republican and federal form of government, was elected with fifty of his followers; while the Croat and Slovene Clericals were equally opposed to centralization. The Communists, also for a republic and decentralization, returned fifty-eight members. In the confusion of many parties, none holding a majority, the veteran Pashitch became premier once more and began to rule with a heavy hand and by skilful intrigues. He was confronted with the passive resistance of the great majority of Croats and Slovenes. The fifty members of Raditch’s Croatian party followed the Irish Nationalist example and refused to take their seats287 at Belgrade. Pashitch got rid of the fifty-eight Communists by expelling them.

The attempt of ex-Emperor Karl to regain the Hungarian throne at the end of March, 1921, the failure of all efforts from outside and inside to overthrow the Soviet Government in Russia, and the recrudescence of Mohammedan strength through the successes of the Turkish Nationalist movement acted as a sobering influence upon the Jugoslavs, who realized that their newly won liberties would be jeopardized if there were political anarchy at home. Dangers from abroad gave Premier Pashitch the temporary support of the most influential elements, who preferred a centralized Serbia to disintegration or Communism. The constitution, providing for a single chamber, was finally adopted on June 28, 1921, which was supported by all the Jugoslavs with the exception of the Croatians and Slovenes.

King Peter died in August, 1921, and was succeeded by Alexander, who had been acting as regent during all the period of internal confusion since 1914. A marriage was arranged for Alexander with Princess Marie of Rumania, whose older sister had married the Crown Prince of Greece. The wedding took place in June, 1922, and was the occasion of a demonstration of friendship with Rumania and a strengthening of the defensive alliance of Poland, Czechoslovakia,288 Rumania, and Jugoslavia against any revision of the treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon.

King Alexander played a rôle during the World War that endeared him to his people, and he has entered upon a task of uniting the Jugoslavia peoples with a great deal of personal prestige. The Rumanian marriage alliance is popular, because the Jugoslavs see in it a guarantee against a new war in the Balkans. For all that, the Monarchy will be a really constructive force only if Croatians and Slovenes are regarded as equal partners in the new country, held together (as Austria was held together) by common attachment to the crown. When the people amalgamate in such a way as to form one country, Jugoslavia may become a republic. The attitude toward the monarchy is one of personal affection and esteem for the present sovereign, and of conviction that the monarchy has still a useful part to fulfil in developing and consolidating the political life of the country. But the ideal of the Jugoslavs outside the old kingdom is a republic. One might hazard the opinion that republicanism is the inevitable tendency in all Balkan countries. I had the privilege of being present at the marriage festivities in Belgrade, and found that other observers of contemporary Balkan history shared my feeling that the King and Queen of Serbia are simply convenient symbols, internally289 and internationally, of the period of transition and amalgamation through which the new Jugoslavia is passing.

The General Election in April, 1923, however, indicated that the danger of internal disruption has not yet passed, and that some form of federalism will have to be worked out if Jugoslavia is to hope to become a country with representative institutions. The new Chamber contains thirteen parties, several of which are divided by personal antagonism among their leaders. The Radicals, who represent national Serbian traditions and whose policy is centralization held ninety-two seats out of 417 in 1920, and in the recent election secured 109 seats in the reduced Chamber of 313. They are the largest single party, but even if the Serbian Democrats united with them they would still be in a minority. The Democrats are divided among themselves on the issue of centralization versus federation. Neither Radicals nor Democrats obtained a single seat in Croatia or Slovenia. The most remarkable gain was that of Raditch’s Croatian peasant party. In 1920 Raditch had fifty seats out of 417; in 1923 he has seventy out of 313. The twenty-two Slovene Clericals and the two Montenegrins are also Federalists. The disappearance of the Communists and Republicans and the remarkable shrinking of Agrarians indicate that social and290 economic questions are, for the time being, subordinated to that of the question whether the country can be molded into a homogeneous whole or whether there shall be three autonomous states united in a triune kingdom. The issue is squarely before the country; for when the Chamber assembled Premier Pashitch discovered that by no combination could he secure a working majority over the Croatian, Slovenian, and other Federalists.

The situation is by no means desperate. Much that one sees now to condemn will disappear with a little more experience and the mellowing influence of time. It took the United States six years for the thirteen original units to agree upon a modus vivendi, and from 1789 to 1865 to work out the problem of national unity. In sizing up the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, we must distinguish between inherent weaknesses and those that are the result of lack of time or experience. Most of the difficulties in administration and politics arise from newness of the association and the inability to find trained men for governmental posts. Local antagonisms must be overcome, and conflicting local interests reconciled. As soon as railways and ports are constructed and the first shock of marriage overcome, there is no reason to believe that these peoples, occupying rich territories and bound together291 by the ties of blood and language, cannot bridge the cultural gulf that separates them and work out together a better future than they enjoyed separately in the past. But there can be no question of assimilation of one element by the other; there must be amalgamation.

The external dangers and difficulties are of another order and will not easily be overcome unless the Jugoslavic peoples are allowed to work out their own destiny.

Now that Bulgaria is completely disarmed, that Greece has her hands full for years to come, and that Rumania manifests strikingly her intention of remaining on friendly terms with Serbia, the large standing army and the alliance with the other Succession States of the Hapsburg Empire can only mean that the unity of the territories now included in Jugoslavia has not been achieved by the will of the peoples included within the frontiers of this new state. It is an indication of the fundamental weakness of the new Europe of the Paris treaties. The new states were given the advantage every time when it was a question of strategic or economic frontiers; and while the principle of self-determination was invoked to create the new states, it was denied when the new states demanded frontiers to suit their convenience or when they were encouraged by the interests of one or the other of the Entente292 Powers to ask for frontier districts to which they had not aspired. Jugoslavia suffered at the hands of Italy, which, being a big power, made her frontiers as she chose. But Jugoslavia was allowed to treat the vanquished states as she herself had been treated by Italy.

The frontiers of Jugoslavia are a source of weakness and danger, like those of Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. If the real interests of these peoples had been considered, and not the policies of great powers, more permanent frontier lines could have been traced. But the rôles of Austria and Hungary have simply been reversed. The four Succession States are compelled to guard their frontiers arms in hand, and are saddled with alien border populations by the million, which can be governed only by military intimidation. Thus the old European evils of irredentist agitation, of harsh treatment of minorities, of government by military force, have not been done away with.

The Treaty of Neuilly increased materially the already large number of Bulgarians under Serbian rule. Macedonian mountaineers, comitadjis by profession, have not accepted Serbian overlordship and are waging against the Serbs the guerrilla warfare that baffled the Turks and proved so costly to them. The Macedonian League is giving the Serbs much trouble and293 anxiety. In a comminatory note on this subject, one finds M. Nintchitch, the minister of foreign affairs, using to Bulgaria the same argument and employing the same threats Austria used and employed against Serbia, when it was a question of the activities of the Narodny Obrana in Bosnia. We remember that Austria asserted that these activities were engineered from Serbian territory, and it was a summons to stop them that led to the World War. And now Jugoslavia, alarmed over the spirit of rebellion among her Bulgarian subjects in Macedonia, talked to Bulgaria as Serbia used to object to Austria talking to her!

After four years of anxious effort Jugoslav statesmen began to see the danger of having hostile neighbors and constant frontier disputes when internal questions were still far from being settled. A sensible attitude was adopted toward Italy and Bulgaria. Stubbornness in the west and intimidation in the east were abandoned as profitless. In the spring of 1923 the Jugoslavs got together with the Italians at Abbazia (and later Rome) and with the Bulgarians at Nish. Moot questions were frankly thrashed out. With Italy the problem of Porto Baros, on the coast near the frontier with the Free State of Fiume, was solved by mutual compromise. With Bulgaria it was decided that practical measures should be taken by both states to minimize the inconveniences294 and political agitation of comitadji raids. Bulgaria was to be allowed to conscript frontier guards, and Serbia was granted the right to pursue comitadjis on Bulgarian territory.

The debacle of Greece in Asia Minor, the dramatic return of the Turks to Thrace, and the sudden overthrow of the Stambulisky régime in Bulgaria compelled the new Jugoslav Government to make a military demonstration in Macedonia in June, 1923. From Nish to Strumnitza troops were concentrated. The Serbians intimated at Lausanne to the Turks and at Sofia to the Bulgarians that no move to modify or upset the Treaty of Neuilly would be tolerated. In view of what has happened at Lausanne, however, it is doubtful if this attitude can be maintained. When the Turks successfully resisted the Treaty of Sèvres, they made a precedent and set an example for the other conquered nations. The Bulgarian revolution is the logical result of the success of the Angora Nationalist movement. Jugoslavia is not yet secure, in so far as the Balkans are concerned, in her fruits of victory.

295

We have three groups of minor nations in Central and Eastern Europe: those whose emancipation or extension of frontiers is at the expense of the Central Empires; those whose emancipation or extension of frontiers is at the expense of Russia; and the Balkan States, completing their emancipation from Turkey and establishing new frontiers at the expense of each other. Czechoslovakia belongs to the first category; Poland and Lithuania to the first and second categories; Finland and the Baltic States to the second category; the Ukraine also to the second category, although her claim to Eastern Galicia, denied by the Supreme Council, would put her in the first category as well; Jugoslavia to the first and third categories; Greece and Bulgaria and Albania to the third category. Rumania has the unique distinction of being in all three groups. And the factors and conditions in the creation of Greater Rumania are different from those that attend the resurrection or enlargement of the other minor states. Our296 small Allies (and Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria) face the general problems of the groups to which they belong. Rumania faces all the problems of all the groups.

Like Greece and Serbia, Rumania is confronted with a complete and radical remolding of the old political organism and a transformation of her social and economic life by the incorporation of “unredeemed” elements too large and too different culturally to assimilate; her agrarian and electoral problems are similar to those of Hungary; with Poland, she must face Bolshevism or make concessions to the irredentism of Russian subject races or find herself later forced to choose between Russia and Germany; she has frontier aspirations in common with Bulgaria and Italy against Serbia; she must resist the conspiracy of Great Britain and France to substitute themselves for Germany as her economic suzerain; and, as her only outlet is through the Dardanelles, she cannot remain indifferent to the disposition of Constantinople.

In common with all the races of southeastern Europe, the Rumanians had their independence and their political unity destroyed by the Turks centuries before the awakening of what we call “national consciousness.” When they tried to take advantage of the decay of the Ottoman Empire to reconstitute a state in the modern sense of297 that word, i. e., by bringing together into one political organism the regions where the majority of the people spoke the same language and felt the ties of blood and common interests, they faced implacable enemies in the empires of Austria and Russia. The policy of the Hapsburgs and Romanoffs was to extend their own frontiers at the expense of the Ottoman Empire. The resurrection of the Christian races subject to Turkey into political units was opposed by both empires, because each believed that the other would control the new state. Great Britain and France, and later Germany and Italy, adopted the same policy for the same reason. Up to 1880, the Occidental powers feared Russian control of the Balkans. They did not want the Slavs to have an outlet on the Mediterranean. During the generation preceding the World War, France—and later Great Britain—shifted their opposition from Russia to Austria. Where they had worried about the Romanoffs, they now feared the Hohenzollerns. Unified Germany was gaining control of the Hapsburg Empire to further her Drang nach Osten.

But the motives actuating Balkan policy did not change. All the Balkan States, and Rumania especially, were potential factors in upsetting the European balance of power. Hence they must be kept as small and powerless as possible, for fear298 of disturbing the peace of Europe. Irredentism, whether the agitation for extending frontiers was directed against Mohammedan Turkey or Christian Russia and Austria-Hungary was frowned upon. To prevent the Balkan States from forming an alliance to secure their national unity, the great powers arranged frontiers at Paris in 1856 and at Berlin in 1878 in such a way as to kindle the animosity of one Balkan race against the other. The Balkan races were not consulted in the drawing up of frontiers. They were not brought together and asked to settle their own differences by mutual compromises, with the great powers abstaining from interference. The same policy was followed at Paris in 1919. It bids fair to have the same results.

There is this difference, however, between the Congress of Berlin and the Conference of Paris. In 1919 the small nations protested more effectively against their exclusion from debates and their non-participation in decisions affecting their interests. They had taken advantage of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and Russia to occupy “unredeemed” territories. Rumania led the others in defying the Big Four. Refusing to abide by the decrees of a conference in which she had no voice, Rumania went ahead and formed her enlarged state as she wanted it. Only in a portion of the Banat of Temesvár and at the299 mouth of the Maros River are the Rumanians not under military control of Greater Rumania.

Most plausible have been the inspired articles from Paris condemning the intractability of Rumania. Rumania violated the terms of the armistice between the Allies and Hungary. Her forces occupying Budapest acted like highwaymen. The presence of a French army alone kept the Rumanians from overrunning a wholly Serbian portion of the Banat of Temesvár. Saved from the Austro-German yoke by Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, the Rumanians have shown their ingratitude, by refusing to abide by the wise just, and impartial decisions of the Supreme Council. They lay claim to purely Hungarian territory. They give evidence of bad faith and intolerance by not wanting to accept provisions in the Treaty of St.-Germain for the protection of racial and religious minorities. These are the charges. But before we pass judgment ought we not to hear the other side of the case and to examine the internal and external policy of Greater Rumania? What are the problems of Rumania as the Rumanians see them?

At the Peace Conference Premier Bratianu claimed as the component parts of Greater Rumania (1) the kingdom of Rumania as it was in 1914, (2) the province of Bessarabia, formerly belonging to Russia, (3) the Austrian province300 of Bukowina, and (4) the portion of Hungary known as Transylvania, the Maramouresh and Crishana regions, and the Banat of Temesvár. The greater part of the new frontiers claimed is clearly marked by great waterways, the Dniester, the Danube, and the Theiss. The Rumanians admit that these frontiers give them 250,000 Serbians in the angle between the Theiss and the Danube, a partly Hungarian population in the lower valley of the Maros, and many Bulgarians and Turks in the Dobrudja region taken from Bulgaria in 1913. But they argue that 100,000 Rumanians in Bulgarian territory and 300,000 Rumanians in Serbian territory on the right bank of the Danube offset Bulgarians and Serbians incorporated into Rumania. They point out, also, that more than 100,000 Rumanians will remain to Russia between the Dniester and the Bug. As for the Hungarians, if the frontier is drawn on strictly ethnographical lines, an impossible economic situation would be created, because of the loss of the means of exit by natural waterways and of the control of canals and railways.

Taken as a whole, the Rumanian claims were as legitimate as those put forth by any other country at the Paris Conference. The National Council of Bessarabia declared its reunion with Rumania on April 9, 1918; a General Congress of Bukowina (including the Poles and Germans)301 adopted a similar resolution on November 28, 1918; and on December 1, 1918, a General Assembly of elected representatives at Alba-Julia declared the union of Transylvania and the Banat of Temesvár “and the Rumanian territories of Hungary” with the kingdom of Rumania. This act of union was ratified on January 8, 1919, by a General Assembly of the “Saxons of Transylvania.” By two royal decrees King Ferdinand accepted the administrative control of these territories and admitted to the Rumanian cabinet ministers without portfolio to represent them. The Peace Conference was confronted with a fait accompli.

The Big Four and the Supreme Council that followed them did not contest Rumania’s right to Transylvania and to the larger portions of Bukowina and the Banat of Temesvár. These had been promised by the secret treaty of 1916. Since the principle of the conference was strictly vae victis, the question of a revision of the Bulgarian boundary of 1913 did not come up. But the powers were afraid to say anything about Bessarabia. That its inclusion in Rumania was in accordance with the principles for which they had fought did not bother them. For a whole year our peacemakers played a disgusting game of duplicity with Rumania in the Bessarabian question, the proofs of which were in the hands of302 Premier Bratianu as early as April. It is distasteful to have to say so, but since we have not minced words with Rumania why should she mince words with us?

The President of the United States and the Premiers of France, Great Britain, and Italy did not discourage Rumania’s aspirations because they wanted to use the Rumanians to fight the Bolsheviki. And while they were “stringing” Premier Bratianu they secretly promised Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin that the future of Bessarabia should be decided by the Russians themselves. This was on a par with the promise made by the French representatives at Kiev to Ukrainia in 1918. On November 1, 1919, Rumania finally lost the last vestige of confidence in the good faith of her big allies; and she formally notified the Supreme Council of the annexation of Bessarabia. God helps those who help themselves. Since Cavour, statesmen of all small countries have learned in their dealings with the great powers that so long as one looks upon them as Dives crumbs and crumbs alone fall from the table. The union of Bessarabia with Rumania was approved by the Supreme Council in March, 1920, after the collapse of the Russian counter-revolutionary movements.

The Entente Powers acted as a moderating influence in dealing with the territorial claims of303 Rumania against Hungary and Serbia. As regards Hungary, the Rumanians admitted themselves that a fair frontier was exceedingly difficult to establish. The Hungarian islands in the eastern part of Transylvania gave them a larger Magyar population than they wanted; and, unlike the Poles, the Rumanians realized the danger of annexing alien border districts. Between Rumanians and Hungarians the bitterness is not so great as between Poles and Germans or between Poles and Russians. The boundary finally agreed upon by the Entente commission gave Rumania a far more advantageous frontier than she had either ethnographic or economic right to. But Hungary is so self-supporting a country agriculturally that the loss of provinces does not cause the hardships and force the lower standard of living that Germany and Austria are suffering.

The frontier dispute with Serbia has been adjusted, but to the satisfaction of neither state. The Banat of Temesvár is a little country lying north of the Danube from a point above Belgrade east to the Iron Gates. The Theiss River, running due south into the Danube, separates it from the former Bacs-Bodro province of Hungary. In the angle between the Theiss and the Danube, the Serbian-speaking population overflows both rivers and penetrates for many miles into the Banat. Farther east, the Rumanian population304 has overflowed south of the Danube for fifty miles in the Timok Valley and in the extreme northwestern corner of Bulgaria. When the Serbians advanced their claim to a portion of the Banat, disregarding the natural river boundaries, the Rumanians countered with the statement that there would still be more Rumanians in Serbia, in territory contiguous to Rumania, than Serbians in Rumania, if the entire Banat should be awarded to Rumania.

The Theiss and the Danube are natural frontiers. Either the Danube is a boundary or it is not. If it is not, the ethnographical argument cuts both ways. But the Supreme Council, in order to appease the Jugoslavs, took their side against Rumania and divided the Banat. The river from which the Banat takes its name, the canals, and the railway reach the Danube and Theiss through territory awarded to Serbia. In the hinterland are the richest coal and iron regions of the old Kingdom of Hungary. The short-sighted, self-centered diplomacy of the Big Four did not behave with real friendship for Serbia nor with regard for permanent peace in the Balkans. The principle applied was the exact opposite of the one used in deciding frontier questions between Italy and Serbia. One cannot escape from the conclusion that the underlying motive was what had always guided the great305 powers in their Balkan diplomacy, to limit one another’s influence and to prevent the Balkan States from arriving at a direct compromise, thus keeping troubled waters in which to fish.

The most serious quarrel between Rumania and the Entente Powers was over the method of drawing up the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon, and over certain of their stipulations regarding protection of minorities and economic privileges. Writers who took their cue from the statesmen of the great powers, including those of our own country, gave the public a persistently unfair and denatured explanation of Rumania’s attitude on these questions. There was a bitter background of experience behind the Rumanians when they refused to accept the renewal of the Berlin clauses concerning the protection of minorities. At Berlin they had offered to grant full citizenship to Jews if Russia would assume a similar obligation. It was dangerous to give citizenship to immigrants and children of immigrants automatically so long as Russia continued to oppress the Jews. In a few years Rumania would have been swamped. In 1917, when the old régime disappeared in Russia, citizenship was voted to native Jews of Rumania. They were enfranchised; a renewal of the Berlin stipulations and the making of a new contract with the powers were unnecessary. The minorities in the new territories were protected306 by the provisions in the Acts of Union, which had been presented to the Peace Conference. Why should Rumania put her head into the noose by signing an annex with the big powers which would enable them to find a pretext at any time to blackmail Rumania for economic concessions by stirring up trouble?

To call the Anglo-French bluff and to prove that there was an ulterior motive not connected with anxiety for the fate of minorities in the objectionable clauses of the Treaty of St.-Germain and its annex, Rumania offered to accept pledges in regard to both Jewish and Christian minorities, if the contract was to be between Rumania and the League of Nations and if all the members of the League of Nations, including the great powers, were willing to make similar contracts. This proposal was putting into concrete form, to test it, the war aim of Great Britain, as phrased by Sir Edward Grey, that all nations should be given identical opportunities, irrespective of size, to work out their own salvation in their own way.

When the Supreme Council received from its agents the analysis of the Pan-Rumanian General Election, they saw that the people of Greater Rumania were determined not to agree to any infringement of national sovereignty. Unwilling to have Rumania stay out of the League of Nations, the Supreme Council gave in. The lines307 and the preamble referring to the engagements imposed upon Rumania by the Treaty of Berlin were struck out of the Treaty of Neuilly. Article LX of the Treaty of St.-Germain was emasculated. The annex concerning minorities was modified, and now became a free-will undertaking, in accordance with the Acts of Union of the new provinces, and entailed an obligation from the Rumanian Government only to her own peoples and not to the principal Allied and Associated Powers. As for the Jews, the annex recognized that the amendments of 1917 to the Rumanian constitution covered their protection.

General Coanda signed the amended treaties in Paris on December 10, 1919. Thus ended in a notable victory the rebellion of Rumania begun, in common with the other minor states, at the second plenary session of the Peace Conference. Rumania avoided remaining a satellite. She would henceforth have to dance to no great power’s piping. It was a victory for all the smaller states in resisting the hope of the World War victors to use the small Allies for their own political ends and commercial profits.

Rumania, of course, like other countries, is far from blameless in her dealings with minorities. Less than half of the several millions taken from Hungary and given to Rumania by the Treaty of Trianon are of Rumanian origin. The Magyar308 and Saxon minorities of Transylvania live largely in the cities. Their culture is a thousand years old. Most of the commerce and industry is in their hands, and their holdings in land are out of proportion to their numbers. Most of the Rumanians, on the other hand, are farmers and herdsmen. The Rumanian Government has simply turned the tables and is doing what the Hungarian Government used to do and what the Germans did in Alsace-Lorraine, striking at the minorities through their educational institutions by trying to force the exclusive use of the Rumanian language in the schools. This is causing hardships and unrest of a serious character, and it remains to be seen whether it will be successful. The difficulty is the same as in all the Succession States of the Hapsburg Empire. The new masters are culturally inferior and politically less experienced than the former masters who are now at their mercy.

Before the World War the Kingdom of Rumania was the most populous and the wealthiest of the minor states of eastern Europe. But it was the most backward in democratic evolution. Political and economic conditions were more like those in Russia than in any other European country. Sixty per cent of the population over seven years could neither read nor write—about the same percentage as in Poland. Suffrage was exercised309 through an elaborate system of three electoral colleges, which kept the power in the hands of the large landowners and the small educated element. The common people had no voice in the government. Conservatives and Liberals, with scarcely any distinction in their policies, controlled Parliament in the interest of a very small class. About half of the cultivable land was in the hands of less than forty-five hundred proprietors. Forests and pasturage were even more monopolized.

The crushing defeat of Rumania by the Central Powers and the Russian revolution, calamities as they seemed to be at the time, were really blessings in disguise. There was no hope for the Kingdom of Rumania, much less of realizing the dream of Greater Rumania, unless radical changes were made in the political and economic organization of the Kingdom. The people of the Kingdom had to be given a big inducement to stand by the dynasty and the Government. The Rumanians of Hungary would never cast in their lot with the “mother-country” that had failed to free them unless the land and suffrage questions were settled. Bessarabia was called by Petrograd to share in the land redistribution of New Russia. The Rumanian Parliament at Jassy voted the three reforms essential to the rehabilitation of Rumania. To keep the support of their own310 people and of the “unredeemed” Rumanians, constitutional changes were made in establishing universal and equal suffrage and breaking up estates of over five hundred hectares. To conciliate public opinion outside of Rumania, citizenship was extended to native-born Jews.

In the Acts of Union, Transylvania, the Banat of Temesvár, Bukowina, and Bessarabia entered Greater Rumania on the basis of universal suffrage, land distribution, and citizenship to Jews and racial minorities. But they put the limit of estates at one hundred hectares, and stipulated that they should keep their local autonomy.

The population of the new state is nearly doubled. From about 9,000,000 Rumania finds herself with more than 16,000,000. The addition of Bessarabia has brought 2,000,000 new citizens whose preponderant Rumanian element had never enjoyed political and economic conditions very different from those that prevailed in the old Kingdom. But the Rumanians of Hungary have had a radically different background. Taken as a whole, they are far more advanced than the Rumanians of the Kingdom. Having had to struggle for centuries against Magyarization, they fought for a hold on the land and for control of industries. They have been widely trained in the importance of exercising suffrage as a means of combating the Magyars. Their language and311 primary education and their church have been weapons essential to their separate existence and the growth of national feeling. Hence it is that with universal suffrage, which they alone know how to use, the Rumanians of Hungary threatened to become the dominant element in Greater Rumania. Their leaders do not belong to the aristocracy but come directly from the soil. From the moment of their entry into the Parliament of Bucharest, they dispossessed the old politicians, who were servants of the landed aristocracy. They demanded the removal of the capital from the Kingdom to Transylvania, suggesting Kronstadt (Brasso).

When the first Parliament of Greater Rumania assembled, the old politicians of the Kingdom tried to get King Ferdinand to appoint a premier and approve the formation of a cabinet without regard to the parliamentary majority. Jonescu and Averescu signified their willingness to “save Rumania.” Their plea was that the actual constitutional union had not yet taken place, and that Rumania was in a transitional stage, without definite frontiers and without international recognition. Until the treaties with the defeated coalition were ratified by the Allies, and until some general policy was adopted by the victorious coalition in regard to Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and common financial questions, they argued that312 the new Parliament was not in a position to function constitutionally as the law-making body of the new Rumanian political organism. In the Acts of Union, did not the Rumanians of Hungary and Austria and Russia expressly stipulate their local autonomy? The bases of the new Rumanian state and the authority of its united Parliament had yet to be worked out. The thesis was plausible and would have won the day for the time being, had it not been for differences of opinion among the political leaders of the old Kingdom. There was also the fear shared by all that the Rumanians could not hold out against the Supreme Council in the matter of the treaties unless the new Parliament was regarded as constitutional and authoritative, not transitional.

Considerations of foreign policy prevailed. Premier Bratianu resigned. He was succeeded by M. Vaïda, a Transylvanian Nationalist, who could claim the support of the parliamentary majority. Premier Vaïda was a deputy in the Hungarian Parliament at the beginning of the war. His whole life had been spent in fighting against government by a small clique. To emancipate his fellow-Transylvanians from exploitation at the hands of the Magyar aristocracy, he made himself the advocate of universal suffrage, equal and secret; ownership of land by those who work it; exclusion of foreign capital and foreign management313 in the industrial and mining enterprises and in transportation; communal ownership of forests and mines; local autonomy; and universal compulsory education. One readily sees how leaders of subject races, in the fight against a dominant nation, must be radicals and appeal to the common people against vested interests. Where there is a racial question, the nationalism of the oppressed race is inevitably radicalism. Alas for the hopes of the politicians who espoused irredentism and believed that they would be simply extending their field of action! Alas for the hopes of the statesmen of the great powers, who saw in irredentism the means of destroying enemies and creating new fields for commercial and industrial exploitation in small states dependent upon them! The easily controlled Parliament of the former Kingdom of Rumania was gone forever, now that millions of new voters were added to the electorate—voters whose background had been different for centuries, and who had united with the state whose citizenship they had assumed by agreements containing definite stipulations.

Every nationalist movement has as its corollary the effort to oust foreigners from concessions and economic privileges secured in the days of absolutism and weakness. The Rumanians did not wait to begin the fight to rid their country of economic servitude to the great powers. Germany314 had lost all her treaty privileges of ante-bellum days, and the new treaties provided for the cancellation of concessions and contracts of German and Austro-Hungarian subjects. Of course it was the intention of the victors to substitute themselves for the enemies and rivals they had ousted, and secret agreements to that effect were concluded. But New Rumania is determined to put a stop to the old practice of foreign enterprises protected by diplomatic treaties.

In 1923 the struggle is still going on against the old-fashioned aims of foreign capital, with governmental backing, to bind smaller nations hand and foot. Premier Vaïda did not last long, because of the inevitable disruptive influences at work in coalitions. But the old oligarchy was equally unable to remain in power. When the Constituent Assembly was elected in 1920 there was so much intimidation and corruption that the minority parties began to cry out against its right to frame and adopt a constitution. The Constituent Assembly finally voted the new constitution, under the skilful majority leadership of the veteran Bratiano, who had once more become premier. The final vote was 225 for and 122 against; but the Opposition, denying the legality of the Assembly, declared the constitution unacceptable unless revised. Disorders broke out in Bucharest and the provinces. Premier Bratiano315 at once declared martial law, and the King signed the new constitution. On April 4, 1923, occurred the first serious rioting in Bucharest in which the troops fired upon the people. The minority parties, who gained much strength from the new parts of Rumania, complained that the constitution deprives minorities of political rights and centralizes the powers of the Government in an oppressive manner.15

Rumania is the prey of internal political instability, in which agrarian reform, adjustment to the different conditions heretofore existing in the new provinces, the constant menace from Russia, the revival of Hungary, and the new crisis in the question of the Straits have all played their part. The problems and tendencies of Greater Rumania, so clearly posed and defined at the moment of her birth, have become obscured for the moment in the effort of the country to find internal political stability and to guard against dangers menacing it316 from the east and the west. The Russian danger has been a beneficial thing in one way: it has acted as a deterrent in the internal political strife.

But insecurity has played havoc with Rumanian finances. Her money has depreciated more than that of defeated Bulgaria. And yet Rumania hesitates to contract a large foreign loan, fearing that conditions will be imposed of the kind she successfully resisted at Paris in 1919. So her wealth and mineral oil and cereals are not saving her from following the path of other European states large and small, a path that is leading to bankruptcy.

317

The Treaty of Trianon, signed on June 4, 1920, destroyed a kingdom that had existed for a thousand years by allotting two thirds of the territory and population of the historic realm to Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Jugoslavia, and Austria. Before the collapse of the Central Empires Hungary had a population of about twenty-two millions, nearly half of whom were Hungarian. After the treaty the population was reduced to seven and a half millions, in the proportion: Hungarian, 88.4 per cent; German, 7; Slovakian, 2.2; and about 110,000 Croatians, Rumanians, and Serbians. In order to accomplish the liberation of subject nationalities, Hungarians were put under foreign yoke, all (with the exception of part of those given to Rumania) in contiguous territories, as follows:

318 The Paris Conference, on the recommendation of military experts, changed the boundary between Austria and Hungary, south of the Danube, in order to protect Pressburg (Bratislava), given to Czechoslovakia for a port. There was the added motive of creating a breach between the former allies. The large number of Hungarians put under Czechoslovakia was due to two considerations: to afford the new state a long Danube frontier; and to make possible an Entente airplane and military base close to the capital of Hungary. An ethnographic frontier with Rumania was rejected because of the promises to Rumania during the war to induce her to intervene on the side of the Entente Powers. The Czechoslovak frontier was carried across the Carpathians to include Ruthenia, and nearly half a million Hungarians were transferred to Jugoslav nationality, so that Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Jugoslavia might have common frontiers and railway communications in friendly territory.

The Entente Powers had fought to liberate subject races, not simply to give border populations a change of masters. But the new countries needed strategic frontiers and economic resources. Therefore their liberation necessitated the slavery of one third of the former master race to the former subject races. Defeated Hungary saw the principle of self-determination invoked319 in behalf of other peoples for the purpose of despoiling her, but ignored when for economic or strategic reasons the liberated peoples needed territories inhabited by Hungarians. It was a case of turning the tables. Might once more made right. The Hungarians were given a dose of their own medicine. The outcry against the Treaty of Trianon, whose terms were announced just after Hungary had passed through the Bela Kun Communist reign of terror and the occupation and pillage of Budapest by the Rumanians, was universal. But the vanquished Magyars were as powerless to protest effectively against the Treaty of Trianon as the Germans had been a year earlier to reject the Treaty of Versailles.

Hungary lost most of her hydraulic power, forests, paper-mills, cereals, potatoes, honey, silk-cocoons, coal, and everything else that went to make up the economic life of this Danubian region centered at Budapest. In the era of steam-power and world markets, Hungary, like other states, had developed as a whole, each region fitting in a scheme of things that made the different parts dependent upon one another. Commerce and manufacturers were concentrated at Budapest, which was equipped with transportation, warehouses, and banks to handle the business of the entire country. Fiume had been the common port for all the Hungarian provinces. Now in320 her shorn state, cut off from access to the sea, and with the former subject regions raising tariff-walls against her, what was left of Hungary, and especially the city of Budapest, seemed to be condemned to ruin.

But when one visits Hungary three years after the signing of the Treaty of Trianon and asks for an honest answer to the question, “Is the present Hungary a hopeless proposition, a state that cannot live?” one does not get a categorical affirmative. Nor have any leaders whom I interviewed declared that the payment of reparations was impossible, provided a definite and reasonable sum was finally agreed upon. When I probe, and try to get at the bottom of the grievances, I discover that my Hungarian friends are invariably comparing the present situation, and its calamities, with what Hungary used to be.

Like the Turks, the Hungarians won and maintained by superior force a privileged position in a vast country which they shared with other peoples. They were a dominant race, who tried to impose their language and culture on others. When they fought the Germans to retain their independence and arrived at the compromise of the Dual Monarchy, it did not occur to them that self-government was a privilege as precious and as advantageous to other peoples as to themselves. And, now that they have lost321 their dominant position in the same way in which they gained it, that is, by war, it is hard for them to reconcile themselves to a more humble station in life. They accepted the treaty, for they did not intend to commit national suicide. But after the power to impose their rule upon others has gone, they retain the curious feeling that they still ought to be considered as possessing the inalienable right to all the regions they once ruled!

One criticizes the Treaty of Trianon, not because one has sympathy with Hungarian grievances based upon national pride and interest, but because the frontiers as now drawn are unwise and impolitic if we are looking for a durable world peace and for an end to the intolerable burden of universal military service and heavy armaments. The millions of Hungarians, now aliens in adjacent territory, create a new irredentist problem so dangerous that the Succession States have had to form an alliance to meet it, and the alliance calls for the indefinite maintenance of standing armies to hold the Hungarians down. More than this, with an irredentist question keeping them apart, it is going to be difficult for the neighboring peoples, whose economic interests are interdependent, to reëstablish normal relations.

There is little fear of a fresh outbreak of Communism. That disease ran its course in the322 first months of the disaster, and the people are cured. Bela Kun and his friends gave a practical demonstration of the working of Communism that was convincing enough to satisfy the present generation of Hungarians! The aim of the Hungarian Government is to endeavor to bring about a commercial rapprochement with the former subject peoples in such a way as to free trade relations and exchanges as much as possible from the inconveniences of the new frontier barriers. Through passenger and freight trains, tariff reciprocity, abolition of passport formalities, good will on the part of those who make and enforce regulations of international intercourse—these are what Hungary needs to get on her feet again. The country is able to feed itself and to export cereals and cattle. Once trade relations are resumed with her neighbors on a reasonable basis, Hungary can get to work, balance her budget, and pay reparations. But will Rumania, Jugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia give Hungary a chance to revive? Will they consent to allow the people of the provinces they have taken to form once more the old habit of going to Budapest? There is the rub. The frontiers of Trianon unfortunately influence the Succession States to view the question of rapprochement from the point of view of political security.

323 Hungary now has within her narrowed borders a homogeneous population, and her unrivaled geographical position on the Danube remains. Most of the national hatreds and racial feuds that used to make the Budapest Parliament an arena of wild animals and cause Hungarian statesmen to tear their hair have been transferred to Belgrade and Prague. Less than half the population of Jugoslavia is Serbian of the Orthodox persuasion, and less than half the population of Czechoslovakia is Czech. The minority elements are already causing trouble. Because of their Hungarians and other foreigners, notably their Germans, the new states fear to take the steps toward economic agreements that are dictated by common sense. Political considerations outweigh material advantages.

The Hungarians, despite the oppression of non-Magyar elements, were good stewards. They developed the country materially with skill and energy, and the prosperity of Budapest is well deserved. Not because it was favored by legislation but because of its key position on the Danube did Budapest become a railway-center. The railway lines exist, and the city is equipped to serve the population of the whole region. The Succession States have neither the large cities in annexed territory nor the geographical position to do as well economically by the regions324 over which they are now ruling as Hungary did. And they suffer equally with her the loss of unhampered access to the sea. The Succession States are as much afraid of giving Budapest its old-time accessibility to the regions that used to depend upon it as the French are afraid of allowing Germany to rehabilitate herself by the free play of economic laws.

Unless Hungary finds, then, that she can get along alone she must try to form a union with Rumania or to overthrow by force the Treaty of Trianon.

The first possibility is advocated by many Hungarians, who argue that it is better for Hungary to look to the east than to the west. The one benefit of the disaster of 1918 was freedom from German overlordship. The Hungarians have too vivid a memory of being weighed down by Vienna and latterly by Berlin through Vienna to look forward with satisfaction or equanimity to a new Drang nach Osten. It is pointed out that the Rumanians need Hungarian friendship to make Transylvania and the Banat of Temesvár contented under Rumanian rule. Transylvania is shut off from Rumania by high mountains and looks naturally to the west. All the outlets from the Banat are to the west. Another argument in favor of a close understanding with Rumania is that the Rumanians are, like the Hungarians,325 an island of radically different nationality from the surrounding Slavs.

Rumania does not receive Hungarian overtures any too cordially. Nothing short of a Russo-Bulgaro-Turk combination would induce Rumania to advocate a revision of the Treaty of Trianon and the entry of Hungary either into the Little Entente or into an alliance and customs union with Rumania. That may come, of course, but it is not probable. Practical-minded Hungarians realize that Rumanians object to them for much the same reasons that they object to the Germans. The West knows how to impose political domination through cultural superiority. And as Berlin and Vienna are to Budapest, so Budapest is to Bucharest.

The alternative is what has always been the lot of Hungary, the decision to find her support in Teutonic Central Europe at the price of industrial inequality and political vassalage. It is probable that when Russia returns to her old self she will resume her Balkan policy. This will drive Italy once again, with sounder reason than last time, into an alliance with Germany. Then Hungary, mourning her lost provinces, will be a valuable ally.

The Paris Conference had a glorious chance to detach Hungary permanently from dependence on Central Europe and make it worth her while326 to live an independent life. It was in the power of the conference to draw the frontiers of Hungary along ethnographic lines, using one weight and one measure in dealing with the border-land claims of all the Danubian states. This great occasion was missed.

Two influences from the outside have given new life and hope to the smoldering fires of Hungarian Nationalism. For a while after Admiral Horthy and the Whites overcame the Communists, Hungary was prostrate. The people were apathetic. The Treaty of Trianon was a crushing blow, and there was the tendency to regard it as definitive. But the attitude of the Entente Powers themselves, first in encouraging Turkey to resist the application of the Treaty of Sèvres and second in agreeing ignominiously to make a new treaty with the Turks when Mustapha Kemal Pasha successfully defied the Entente decrees, has given new hope to the Hungarians. What the Angora Nationalists did—the Turks are kinsmen of the Hungarians—the Magyars can do. All they have to wait for, as has been demonstrated by the events in Asia Minor, is fresh discord or simply lack of harmony among the Entente Powers. Then the Hungarians feel that they may not have to wait for the recovery of Germany, but can get the help of the Italians against the Little Entente. Is327 this an absurd hope? Experience makes justifiable an emphatic negative!

The other inspiration that has come from abroad is the success of Fascismo in Italy. The Hungarians have long had “the wakeners,” an organization formed as the Fascisti group was formed to suppress Communism and Socialism. The August, 1922, revolution in Rome strengthened immeasurably the influence of “the awakeners” in Budapest, where, in the Wenkheim Palace, a new society, closely modeled on the Fascisti, and with similar rites, is aiming to set up a Fascist government.

The “Argrad Blood Association” and the “Turanian Association” are moving for a Hungarian alliance with Mohammedanism. More significant still is the “Hungarian Defense League,” a militarist organization of former officers which still controls secretly the notorious military “Detachments” that played the decisive rôle in suppressing Bolshevism. These various organizations have recently spread into Slovakia, Bukowina, Transylvania, and the Banat of Temesvár. The Succession States are beginning to experience the inconvenience of holding large alien populations.

The only factor in the situation that prevents the irredentist movements from being already serious—alarmingly serious—is the agrarian question.328 Hungary is still under the domination of the land-owning classes, while peasant proprietorship has won its way in Rumania and Jugoslavia and is making progress in Slovakia. Most of the large landowners in the now “unredeemed” lands of Hungary are Hungarian aristocrats; and the peasants, although Magyars, knowing the failure of land partition to make progress in Hungary, are not sure that they would be better off if they returned to their old allegiance. Up to this time the oppression of Hungarians in the liberated states has been confined to landowners and townspeople; and the Hungarian peasants have, in fact, profited by this.

The agrarian question, until it is settled by the disappearance of great estates, plays a rôle the importance of which can hardly be overestimated in the newly awakened national rivalries in border-lands from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Poles are confronted, for instance, with an embarrassing dilemma. They want to drive the Germanic influence out of the Baltic states because it is a menace to their ambitions. But German influence in the territories ceded by the Treaty of Versailles to Poland and in the Baltic states is based upon the landed aristocracy, which is the foundation of Polish influence in the Russian border-lands and Eastern Galicia. Advocating agrarian laws helps Poland in some places329 and acts as a tremendous boomerang in other places! So it is with the encouragement of irredentist movements. If nationalism finds its support largely with the aristocracy, and they have to go to the peasant masses in coveted border-lands to spread their movement, when the “unredeemed” regions are added to the so-called mother-land, the promoters of the irredentist movement are the first to suffer. It has recently happened that way in Rumania. To-day Hungarians, both peasants and proprietors, are wondering which is the more important, national pride or class interest.

When we study problems and reconstruction in a topsyturvy world, we find that they are not new problems. They are old problems, couched in different terms, perhaps, and clothed a bit differently. But they are the same problems for all that; is not geography the same, distribution of wealth the same, and human nature the same?

330

In the middle of October, 1918, Marshal von Hindenburg telegraphed to Vienna that it would be impossible to hold the western front any longer unless Austrian reinforcements were immediately forthcoming. From a purely military point of view the appeal was reasonable. Although the June offensive had failed, the Austrians were still superior to the Italians; and there was no reason to believe that the Austro-Hungarian armies could not continue to hold their lines, even though they detached a considerable body of troops, until winter made an Italian offensive impossible. Because he was unaware of the moral factors in the situation, von Hindenburg was surprised when he received a refusal. It was at this moment that the handwriting upon the wall appeared before the eyes of the German General Staff.

But it had long been evident at Vienna that the war would be won or lost on the western front and by the Germans alone. With the composite and mutually antagonistic elements that composed331 the armies of the Hapsburg Empire, it was nothing short of a miracle that Austria-Hungary had held out so long. The authority of the Vienna Government was sustained only through the belief of the peoples of the Dual Monarchy that Germany was invincible. The collapse of Russia had come in time to check serious disloyalty in the non-German and non-Magyar portions of the Austro-Hungarian army. Until Germany appealed for aid, most of the Hapsburg subjects felt that they would be playing a losing game if they mutinied.

Study of the records shows that demoralization began in the rear, and that it was the result of news leaking through of disasters falling upon the coalition of the Central Empires. The capitulation of Bulgaria and Turkey came nearer home to Vienna than to Berlin. And yet, if the Germans had been successful on the western front, these events would not in themselves have led to the collapse of Austria-Hungary. It was the German appeal for aid that suddenly made the Vienna Government realize the hopelessness of the situation. There was a revolution at Prague. The Croats proclaimed their independence at Agram. Count Karolyi and Archduke Joseph called the Hungarian divisions back to defend their native land.

For some days the news was kept from the332 troops. In the fighting from October 24 to 28 the Italians had failed signally to achieve on their front results comparable to those of the French and British and Americans on the western front. The Austrian army group at Belluno fought wonderfully—even the Czechs, whose crack Prague regiment distinguished itself. The change came on the night of October 28, when the news of happenings in the rear reached the soldiers in the trenches and in reserve. Ordered to undertake a counter-offensive on the morning of October 29, the soldiers mutinied. The signal was given by the 26th Czech Rifles. The armies began to leave the front. The Hapsburg Empire collapsed in a few hours!

At the suggestion of Admiral Horthy, the imperial fleet was presented to the Jugoslav Government that had been formed at Agram. No opposition was made to the Prague revolution. The imperial authorities made no effort to prevent a revolt in Budapest.

When Austria asked for an armistice and signed the terms of the Entente Powers on November 3, 1918, there really was no longer any Austria. The Vienna Government was not in a position to accept the responsibility for the whole country. Czechs, Poles, and Jugoslavs were out of the empire and were dealing directly with the Allies. Under the armistice terms Italy333 occupied the territories that all the world knew had been definitely promised to her by the secret Treaty of London in 1915. Several million of her German-speaking population passed immediately under the control of the new Czech Government at Prague, and several hundred thousand Tyrolese came within the zone of military occupation of the Italian armies. Austria at the outbreak of the war had a population of about 30,000,000, of whom not more than 10,500,000 were Germans; the Czechs and Slovaks were 6,700,000; the Poles 5,000,000; the Ukrainians 3,700,000; and the Jugoslavs 3,000,000. Thus, while Austrians were more numerous than any other element, they comprised only a third of the population, and more than 3,000,000 of that third were in Bohemia. These figures show how radically different was the situation of Austria from that of Germany. Many of the leading generals and statesmen and a very large number of the functionaries of the Hapsburg Empire were from the non-Austrian and non-Magyar peoples. Throughout the war the army had been composed, officers and men, of the entire population, and the Austrians and Hungarians contributed only about 50 per cent—perhaps less than that—to the fighting forces that had invaded and imposed their will on Serbia and Rumania, had successfully withstood Italy and Russia, and had334 contributed to the success of Germany on the western front. The major part of the Austro-Hungarian artillery was manufactured in Bohemia.

And yet, when the Paris Conference assembled, all the Hapsburg peoples except Austrians and Hungarians were represented and were regarded as co-victors with the Entente Powers. On the other hand, the Austrian element in the Hapsburg Empire was held to be the culprit, responsible for the war, guilty of its excesses; and in the settlement all the sins of the Hapsburgs were visited upon the heads of less than 7,000,000 Austrians. The inconsistency in the attitude of the Peace Conference toward the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Empires is amazing, and shows that neither logic nor a sense of justice inspired the victors, but simply the desire to impose treaties that would serve best their own interests. The Germans were told, when they protested against the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, that no government could have initiated and carried on the war without the consent and support of all the people; therefore, the inhabitants of Germany could not escape punishment by doing away with their government. Germany still remained a powerful nation; therefore prudence inspired guarantees for future good behavior, and a sense of justice demanded the payment of335 reparations and the punishment of war criminals.

Less than 7,000,000 Austrians, a third of whom lived in the city of Vienna, were indicted, tried, found guilty, and punished in the Treaty of St.-Germain for the misdeeds of the Hapsburg Empire. Nothing could have been more absurd than to suppose that these people were a super-race who had dominated for five centuries the peoples round about them, and that from 1914 to 1918 6,500,000 people could have held the other 23,000,000 inhabitants of Austria so completely at their mercy that the latter, bowing to force majeure, should have fought against their will for those who held them, terrorized, in complete subjection. In the great Austrian armies, according to this assumption, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Croatians, Dalmatians, Slovenes, and other peoples were no more than unwilling slaves, doing their master’s bidding. At the same time these non-Austrian elements were assumed to be so superior in culture and inhibitions to the Austrians that all the violations of the laws of warfare, all the crimes, were committed solely by German-speaking soldiers and officers!

If any one thinks I am exaggerating, let him read the Treaty of St.-Germain and bear in mind that this treaty was imposed upon less than one fourth of the inhabitants of pre-war Austria with about one fourth of the area of pre-war Austria,336 and that a third of the inhabitants of the new state live in one city, whose size and equipment for industry and commerce (Vienna is the fourth city of Europe) are the result of economic evolution as the center of a great nation. Read the Treaty of St.-Germain, I ask, and then judge for yourself what must have been the state of mind of the men who framed it.

The Hapsburg Empire was a governmental system, not a nation; and after the rise of the principle of nationality in the nineteenth century it had held together against powerful currents of disintegration because the ruling classes of its various elements believed their prosperity and security were better guaranteed by remaining in the empire than by separating from it. Irredentism became a powerful influence with peasants, when sufficiently worked upon, and with petty politicians, students, and a portion of the professional classes. Landowners, business men, manufacturers, and clergy among all the Hapsburg peoples supported the governmental system, indorsed its foreign policy, and worked as hard as the Austrians and Hungarians up to the very end for the success of the coalition of the Central Empires. The sinking ship was deserted when it was realized that Germany was going to lose.

In the general sauve qui peut, the non-Austrians at Vienna and in the provinces suddenly337 discovered that a new citizenship would save them from the moral and material consequences of defeat and that attention could be diverted from their own war activities by capitalizing the world-wide distrust and hatred of the Germans to include the Austrians. The Treaty of St.-Germain punished a German-speaking people, but it was more cruel and disastrous to the Austrians than was the Treaty of Versailles to the Germans. The Treaty of St.-Germain closed the only door left open to the Austrians for rehabilitating themselves economically and for finding an opportunity of consoling themselves in their ostracism. They were condemned because they were Germans, but they were forbidden to unite with Germany.

Austria lost not only her non-German population and provinces but also one third of her German population. She was rendered militarily impotent, cut off from her access to the sea, deprived of the southern part of the Tyrol with a purely German population, made dependent upon her former provinces for food-stuffs and coal, and left without the means of manufacturing sufficient to pay for the food-stuffs and coal she would have to import. She was left saddled with the great city of Vienna, containing a population of more than 2,000,000, and every effort was made in the treaty to destroy Vienna’s one338 chance of making ends meet, i. e., by remaining a center of distribution on one of the world’s main trade-routes. The route of the Orient Express was changed to run by way of Venice and Triest; through express trains with Germany, the one friendly country, were forbidden; and a new regime for the Danube was created for the purpose of stifling Vienna’s Danube trade. The Austrian delegation at the Peace Conference, through its able spokesman, Dr. Renner, pointed out from indisputable statistics that the Treaty of St.-Germain condemned the Austrians to poverty and slow starvation, and pleaded either for permission to join Germany by the exercise of the right of self-determination (which was the justification of the treaty!) or for guarantees that the lost provinces should arrange to give Austria stipulated amounts of coal and food-stuffs to enable her to exist. The Peace Conference refused to admit the necessity of either alternative. On the other hand, heavy reparations in cash and in kind were inserted in the treaty.

The hopelessness of the situation in which the Peace Conference put the Austrians is demonstrated by the fact that the new Austria is a mountainous country, with less than 25 per cent of its area capable of producing food-stuffs. The hilly country is suitable for breeding cattle but is unable to provide the requirements of the339 people as regards meat and fat. Before the war only 14 per cent of the meat and fat consumed in Vienna came from the provinces left to Austria by the Treaty of St.-Germain. The new Austria’s forests contain soft woods. By the most optimistic calculations she can supply only one fifth of her fuel requirements. Thus manufactures are bound to languish and the people to be permanently undernourished unless Austria joins Germany or is admitted into a customs union with her former provinces. Nearly five years of despair and agony have sufficiently proved this statement. In Vienna the people feel that they are doomed.

The Entente Powers have realized that common humanity as well as policy demand that the Austrians be saved from the fate imposed upon them by the Treaty of St.-Germain. They have come to see that the geographical position of Austria makes it impossible for them to leave her to her fate, as they have done in the case of Armenia. The Succession States also are beginning to come to their senses. Statesmen are now in agreement with economists, and are willing to waive reparations payments and admit that the great highway of Europe by the Danube must continue to be traveled. When Chancellor Seipel made the rounds of the European capitals in the summer of 1922, begging for an international340 loan and for the indefinite postponement, if not the wiping out, of reparations claims, he was received favorably everywhere. The Entente Powers and the Succession States agreed that something must be done, and to the League of Nations was entrusted the task of helping Austria to her feet by means of an international loan. Credits recently granted Austria have enabled the Government to begin a policy of currency reform; and Viennese importers and exporters have been enabled to arrange for a sufficient exchange of Austrian products against coal and food-stuffs to prevent the country from going to pieces.

The scheme of the League of Nations for the financial reconstruction of Austria was embodied in the Geneva protocols, signed on October 4, 1922, and provides for a rigorous control of Austrian finances up to the end of 1924, when it is hoped that the budget will be balanced. The Austrian Government was required to secure from Parliament full authority for two years to go ahead without parliamentary control and to carry out financial rehabilitation—with the reforms necessary to assure it—under the supervision of a Commissioner-General appointed by the League. Dr. Zimmermann, burgomaster of Rotterdam, accepted the task and took up his work in Vienna on December 16. Not the League but341 Great Britain, France, Italy, and Czechoslovakia guaranteed 84 per cent of a total loan of 650,000,000 gold crowns, with Spain taking 4 per cent, Switzerland 3 per cent, Belgium 2 per cent, and Holland 1 per cent. The first four powers, however, agreed to guarantee all the first short-term loan. It was agreed that Austria should dismiss 100,000 officials before July 1, 1924, 25,000 each half-year. This drastic measure was necessary, but it will only add to the unemployment and suffering. Between the time of the signature of the Geneva protocols and the end of the year, the number of unemployed in Vienna rose from 57,000 to 120,000, and by April 1923, had reached 170,000.

The measures imposed and the aid given by the League of Nations are only palliatives. They have not solved the problem; they have only postponed for a brief time the solution. “Austria,” I was told by Dr. Grünberger, minister of foreign affairs, “is like a man whose arms and legs have been cut off, but who is all the same expected to walk and work. We are being given alms, but are told that this is just to tide us over. Tide us over to what?” Dr. Grünberger was food administrator during the trying period immediately after the war, and later minister of commerce. He has taken an active part in Austrian affairs since the first days of the republic. President342 Hainisch and other leaders of political and financial life express the same opinion as Dr. Grünberger, that under the conditions of the Treaty of St.-Germain Austria cannot work out any scheme of independent existence. Nor have the alms-givers presented to the Austrian Government a way of salvation. It stands to reason, therefore, that there must be either a liberal economic arrangement for interchange of raw materials, manufactured articles, coal, wood, and food-stuffs among the Succession States or union with Germany.

A conference of the Succession States, in which British and French representatives participated, was held at Porta Rosa in November, 1921, for the laudable purpose of finding a way to settle some of the practical difficulties arising from the dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire. Postal and telegraph relations and a modus vivendi for transport were arranged, but it was impossible to come to an agreement about the question vital to Austria, that of tariffs. The Succession States, including Italy, needed to arrange with Austria about communications. They did not need to trade with her so much as she needed to trade with them.

Two years have passed since Porta Rosa. Little progress has been made in the establishment of normal and reasonable economic relations343 among the Succession States. This is only partly due to the intractability of the emancipated Hapsburg peoples. For while there are dangers in any such arrangements where it is Hungary who would benefit, the neighbors of Austria do not have to fear from Vienna what there is reasonable ground of fearing from Budapest. Sinister outside influences are at work to prevent the consummation of the movement begun at Porta Rosa. Austria is suffering from the conflicting policies of France and Italy. France has no objection to the regrouping of the Danubian states into an economic federation, if this be necessary for the salvation of Austria. Italy, on the other hand, is determined to prevent the adoption of any plan that might lead to a Danubian federation, in which the Slavs would predominate. Rather than see this accomplished, she would prefer the union of Austria with Germany. To France and Czechoslovakia the incorporation of Austria into Germany is a contingency the possibility of which both countries refuse to admit.

But if an independent Austria is impossible, and Italy, herself the most powerful of the Succession States, blocks the way to the economic agreements Austria must have to exist apart from Germany, what alternative is there to the Anschluss (union)?

Many Austrians are opposed to the Anschluss344 and point out to you that there is no more reason for them to favor joining the German Empire than for Americans to favor joining the British Empire. These irreconcilables, however, admit that the Anschluss is inevitable, on the ground that Austria cannot live alone, and must be either a member of a Danubian federation or a province of Germany. They think that the latter solution is not for the best interests of their country; the prospect wounds their pride; and, from an international point of view, they see only trouble ahead for Europe in the union of their country with Germany.

The acceptance of the present status of Austria as permanent by the League of Nations indicates the subserviency of that supposedly international organization to the interests of certain powers. The Council of the League has postponed the collapse of Austria in the same way as it settled the Upper Silesia and Vilna questions, by offering a solution that took into account the transcendent interests of members of the Council. Austria had to be helped to her feet financially to repair, if possible, the damage done by the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon, which broke up the Hapsburg Empire without providing for economic safeguards for Austria or the alternative—union with Germany.

That the danger remains—a danger that may345 well lead to a new war—is evident from the significant and dramatic participation of Austria in the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first German Parliament at Frankfort-on-Main, on May 18, 1923. Professor Hartmann, Austrian Ambassador to Germany, declared that the Austrians “are hard and fast in their yearning for the union of Austria with Germany,” and he asserted his belief that the Anschluss would be effected eventually. When he reached his peroration, “The revolution of 1918 will bring us as its fruit the unity and coördination of German middle Europe into one state,” the audience rose to its feet in frenzied applause, led by President Ebert, Herr Loeb, president of the Reichstag, and other leading officials of the German Federal and State Governments.

346

At the end of the World War the British and French press begged Italy to renounce a part, at least, of the spoils promised her by the secret treaties of 1915. It was feared that a hopeless conflict would develop at the Paris Conference between Italian imperialism and the American—or rather Wilsonian—doctrine of self-determination. The reasons for this plea are easy to understand. Great Britain expected, as usual, to gather in her advantages from the victory outside Europe; and France had one objective, to which she was willing to sacrifice everything else, the achievement of her own security by the diminution of the German Empire and the shackling of German industries and commerce. It was felt in London and Paris that if Italy were to stand on her treaty rights the whole problem of peace would be made insoluble by alienating President Wilson and by creating antagonism to the Entente in south central and southeastern Europe.

347 Alone among the members of the Orlando Cabinet, Signor Bissolati, the famous Socialist leader, advocated openly the application of the principle of nationality in the peace settlement. He said that the Treaty of London did not alter the fact that Italy should abandon her claim to northern Dalmatia, the Dodecanese, and the southern Tyrol. By these sacrifices he asserted that Italy would avoid friction with the Jugoslavs, win the friendship of Greece, and abstain from the injustice of annexing, for purely strategic reasons, the purely German population of the Tyrol. When his advice was rejected, Bissolati resigned his portfolio and was followed by Nitti. A propaganda was launched in Italy to work up enthusiasm for the Italian claims, to which was added a demand for Fiume.

Public opinion was aroused to such an extent that when Premier Orlando failed to obtain complete recognition in Paris for the Italian point of view he found himself obliged to resign, and was succeeded by Signor Nitti just before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. The Italian claims as one of the Succession States of the Hapsburg Empire were kept before the world by the seizure of Fiume in September. The poet, d’Annunzio, defied the commands of the Peace Conference and the Italian Government to evacuate the city.

348 The new premier had formed a coalition Government, representing all parties except the Socialists. At the General Election in November the Socialist party doubled its strength, and a newly formed Clerical party won more than a hundred seats. However, as there was no possibility of an alliance between Socialists and Clericals, Nitti was able to form another coalition cabinet without these two parties. Nitti announced that Italy’s policy would be one of moderation in regard to Germany and that his Government would seek to solve the Adriatic question by direct negotiations with Jugoslavia.

Like Orlando at Paris, however, he failed at the San Remo conference of Entente premiers to gain an advantageous settlement of the succession of the Hapsburg empire; and it soon leaked out that he had consented to a treaty with Turkey which Italian public opinion believed to be too favorable to Greece. Again like Orlando, Nitti was forced out of office by the failure of his foreign policy. He was succeeded by the veteran Giolitti, whose return to power caused tremendous surprise abroad: for Signor Giolitti had opposed to the very end Italy’s intervention in the World War. Giolitti was able to make a direct agreement with Jugoslavia and to secure its ratification by the Italian Parliament before the end349 of November. The Treaty of Rapallo was hailed by Italian public opinion as the best possible solution of a difficulty that could not have been solved to the complete satisfaction of Italy except by war. The virtual unanimity of the support given to the Treaty of Rapallo was emphasized by the lack of protest in any quarter when Premier Giolitti ordered the Italian troops on Christmas eve to oust d’Annunzio from Fiume.

The surprising reasonableness of public opinion in questions of foreign policy was due to the menace of internal revolution. We have seen elsewhere how in the summer of 1920 the Italians, driven from Albania by a sudden uprising, made no attempt to retrieve their fortunes. The Government’s hands were tied by a railway strike. The railwaymen had refused to transport to Brindisi troops destined for Albania. It was clear that under these circumstances, had Italy gone to war with Jugoslavia, the existing social order might have been overthrown. The lesson of Russia was before the minds of Italian statesmen. The Chamber of Deputies acquiesced when Giolitti, in his statement on June 24, 1920, said in reference to foreign policy:

Our principal object is to insure complete and definite peace for Italy and the whole of Europe—an essential condition for a solid beginning of the work of reconstruction....350 In order to achieve this complete peace we must, without delay, establish friendly relations with all other peoples, and, without restriction, begin normal relations even with the Russian Government.

The veteran premier, to win the support of the Socialists against the Communists, whose spread was alarming, promised a bill amending the constitution to make declarations of war and treaties and agreements with foreign powers subject to the sanction of Parliament.

It was none too soon. In the middle of September the industrial workers, especially in the north, seized steel factories in a large number of localities and established Soviets. They insisted that the employees should supervise the buying of raw materials, the selling of the finished product, the adjustment of the scale of wages, and the general conditions of work in the factories. The next month there were peasant risings in Sicily. Revolution seemed imminent. But the Government matched its moderation in foreign policy with a conciliatory attitude toward the workers. Instead of using force, Premier Giolitti announced his intention of introducing a measure, sponsored by the cabinet, imposing a form of syndical control upon the manufacturers. It was also proposed to confiscate war profits, increase death-duties and taxes on unearned incomes, and encourage copartnership in industries.

351 These wise concessions enabled the Giolitti Government to cut the budget deficit by lessening the subsidy on imported cereals. This raised the price of bread, a courageous measure. The General Election of May, 1921, was far more peaceable than had been anticipated. The Socialists lost thirty seats, and the Clericals (Popolari) gained eight. A new party, which had been opposing Socialists and Communists in many places by violence, entered the Chamber with twenty seats; they called themselves Fascisti. The majority of the Cabinet in the new Chamber was so small that Giolitti resigned, and was succeeded by Signor Bonomi. In the autumn of 1921 the Fascisti held a congress at Rome, in which they transformed their organization into a regular political party. During the congress the street fighting that had begun earlier in the year in other cities broke out on a small scale for the first time in Rome. When Parliament reopened on November 24, the Fascisti took issue in a noisy fashion with the Communists.

The Bonomi Cabinet was forced out of office at the beginning of February, 1922, by a combination of circumstances difficult to analyze. The immediate cause was the union of the Democratic coalition with the Socialists, who protested against Bonomi’s rapprochement with the Vatican. But that this was not a real issue soon became352 evident. The new Cabinet, headed by Signor Facta, failed to win the confidence of the country, which was becoming, under the impulsion of the Fascisti, impatient of government by compromise. Successive cabinets had failed utterly to suggest, much less put into execution, fiscal measures for rehabilitating the finances of Italy. The country was gradually drifting toward anarchy.

In the late summer of 1922, when parliamentary leaders, after the resignation of Signor Facta, appealed to Giolitti to come to Rome to advise the King, a sudden coup d’état put an end to the “rule of the old men.” Fascisti from all over Italy poured into Rome on every train, wearing black shirts and armed, and singing the death-knell of the old political system:

Socialists and Communists were quickly cowed. The governmental troops, most of them members or sympathizers of the Fascisti, could not be counted upon. The King had the choice of calling Benito Mussolini, leader of the Fascisti, to form a cabinet, or of losing his throne. The Fascist movement had made such great progress in Italy since 1920 and was so well organized that civil war was out of the question. Almost everybody353 sympathized with the program of the Fascisti. So Mussolini became premier, and has been the uncontested, though unconstitutional, ruler of Italy for more than a year.

Fascismo is primarily a movement of the youth of Italy, under youthful leaders, most of them born half a century after Giolitti, and none of them in the same generation with the men who were the political leaders of Italy up to the summer of 1922. Despite the pronouncement of the first Rome congress, in the autumn of 1921, Fascismo is not a political party. Its strength as such is negligible. Born at a meeting in Milan in 1919, its purpose, in the words of Mussolini, was defined as a movement “of the spiritual forces of Italy to awaken in Italians the full sense of their own greatness and destiny as a nation.... And it proposes at any cost, even at the cost of Democratic conventions, to crush any tendency that may threaten to drag the Italian people into the morass of Socialism, Bolshevism, and Internationalism.” From the beginning of the movement Mussolini has insisted that the future of the nation must be in the hands of those who are to live that future, and that the time had come to put Italy into her true place among the nations of the world.

From 1920 to 1922 Italy was ripe for revolution. Several parties formed armed bands.354 The Socialists lost because of Communist excesses and the ungenerous attitude they adopted toward army officers. After all, the war, with its heavy sacrifices, had captured the imagination of the young; and there was much idealism and sincere patriotic feeling among the youth of Italy. They reacted strongly against the Socialist teaching of pacifism and internationalism. The middle class in the cities began to be alarmed at the tendency of the Socialists to assume that only those who worked with their hands were useful members of society and had rights. It was inevitable that the Socialist bullying and terrorism should lead to armed resistance on the part of the more conservative elements. Mussolini, himself of the lower classes, was keen enough to realize that the great mass of the Italian people would welcome a movement directed against the lawlessness of extreme radicalism. He and the principal men he gathered around him to direct Fascismo had all up to the last year of the war been militant Socialists. They had come into prominence through fighting the Government, and the outlaw spirit dominated them. They abhorred politics. And so, although they were sincere syndicalists, they had broken with official Socialism when the movement became a political party, using its energies to win votes.

Mussolini believed that suffrage did not offer355 the remedy, and he was contemptuous of his friends who hoped to advance their theories by getting themselves elected to Parliament.

The Italians were sick of financial and political chaos, and were so apprehensive of Communism that they were ready to stand behind any movement that would combat the Socialist terrorism, even if it meant fighting fire with fire. The Fascist leader appealed to the instinct of self-preservation in the middle classes; and in the course of eighteen months he rallied round him the youth of the middle classes, many sons of the aristocracy, and the support of big industries. All the while he considered the Government as negligible, and not any more to be taken into account than in the old days of his militant Socialism.

The advent to power of Mussolini was wholly illegal, if we regard the philosophy of form. The Fascisti could hardly have won a parliamentary majority in the General Election. Mussolini knew that; but he knew also that Italy was behind him, and would remain behind him regardless of Parliament, if he succeeded in governing firmly and at the same time putting into effect fiscal and other sorely needed reforms. When the King asked him to form a cabinet, he decided upon a coalition Government, five Fascisti, three Democrats, two Catholics, one Nationalist, and one Liberal, and he gave the portfolios356 of war and navy to General Diaz and Admiral di Revel. He declared that the new Government was going to act and not talk and summed up his program in two sentences:

Our policy in internal affairs will be one of strict economy, discipline, and the restoration of our finances. The Fascisti movement, which began as bourgeois, now has become syndicalist, but syndicalist in the national sense, taking into account the interests of workmen and those of employers and producers.

It is always true that power sobers a man and that the possession of governmental responsibility makes things take an aspect different from the one they bear to the political candidate, the agitator, the reformer. Had Mussolini not changed when he became the Government, he would have been an amazing exception. We have seen in recent years the evolution of Lloyd George, Millerand, Briand, and Viviani, all of whom started out as pacifists and advocates of violence against the constituted authorities in order to secure the triumph of their ideals. As soon as Mussolini became premier, he was confronted with the problem of what to do with the youth of Italy. Precisely because he had taught them to take the law into their own hands had he reached his exalted position! The first preoccupation of the new premier was to make his followers understand357 that now that Fascismo had become a Government there must be no more disorders. This was no easy task. It required the adoption of an uncompromising attitude toward many to whom much was owed for the success that had been attained. Local leaders, who refused to look to Rome for guidance in Fascisti activities, were expelled.16 A serious outbreak at Turin, in which the Fascisti took the law in their hands in the old fashion, was followed by rigorous measures.

Mussolini knew that he would be lost if he did not keep control of his own organization and at the same time use it to intimidate recalcitrants in Rome and in the provinces. He disbanded the Royal Guard, created by Premier Nitti in 1920, and replaced it by a new militia, the Black Guards, composed of 80,000 picked Fascisti, whose personal loyalty to the leader had been tested. Those members of the Royal Guard who were Fascisti were put in the Carabinieri. The other groups that had started as the Fascisti had started were forcibly disarmed and disbanded. They included the followers of d’Annunzio, the358 Blue-Shirt Nationalists, and the Arditi del Popolo, whose clashes with the Fascisti had been going on for two years.

When Parliament reopened on November 16, 1922, Mussolini did not ask for a vote of confidence; he ordered it. He told the Chamber that there would be no discussion as to who had the power; it would be futile. He did not want to dismiss the Chamber, unless they made such action necessary. Having at his call “300,000 fully armed youths, resolved to anything and almost mystically ready to obey my orders, it is in my power to punish all who defame and attempt to throw mud at Fascismo. I can make this hall a camping-place for my bands. I can close Parliament and constitute a purely Fascist Government.” Mussolini went on to say that if the vote of confidence were not awarded there would be a new election made “with Fascist clubs.”

After this threat, a vote of confidence was a farce. The sitting of Parliament was a farce. The deputies had to listen to threats and abuse from their Fascist colleagues. The only thing to do was to preserve at least a form of constitutionalism by granting Mussolini what he intended to take without the leave of the Chamber. A resolution was adopted granting Mussolini full powers to do as he pleased, his decrees to have the359 force of law until December 1, 1923. To save their faces, the deputies added that Mussolini should be called upon in March, 1924, to give an account to Parliament of the use of the powers conferred by this law. Less than 300 of the 535 members of the Chamber were present. The rest absented themselves, by reason of antagonism, fear, or indifference. The Chamber was not convoked again until February 7, 1923, when the ratification of foreign treaties was necessary. The parliament building was surrounded by Black Guards, and Mussolini refused to be interpellated on domestic questions. Throughout Italy, in local elections, the Fascisti took charge of the polls. No other than Fascisti could be voted for. But the voters were not allowed to remain away from the polls as a protest. In many places, absentees were assumed to be ill, and large doses of castor-oil were administered!

The first year of the Mussolini régime has been marked by a tendency toward the Right. Labor organizations have been forcibly disbanded, coöperative stores closed, and censorship of radical journals established; and the principle of private ownership of railways and all other state industries, including the post-office, is being adopted. Many schools, too, have been turned over to private management. The Mussolini360 Government is charged by its enemies with plunging Italy into the worst sort of reaction at a time when the rest of Europe is moving toward Liberalism politically and socially. His attack on Freemasonry was startling and marked the cutting away from the traditions of the last half-century. At the same time, Mussolini frankly announced the intention of granting official recognition to the Catholic Church.

On the other hand, the Fascist principles make Fascismo inimical to genuine Conservatism. While disclaiming state control of industries and crying out against Bolshevism, Mussolini finds himself, by the very nature of his hold upon the country, nearer Lenin in spirit and practice than any other ruler in Europe. Because Fascismo has now actually become the Government, individualism must be submerged to the state. Mussolini cannot be other than an autocrat. He has spoken with enthusiasm of a rapprochement with the Church and has allowed crucifixes to be hung in the rooms of public schools. But when the Catholics at their spring congress in 1923 adopted a program in conformity with their own interests, Mussolini demanded that certain resolutions be withdrawn. His command was not literally obeyed. The Catholics simply tried to explain diplomatically that they had meant no offense. Mussolini would not tolerate divided loyalty. He361 immediately asked for the resignation of the Catholic members of his cabinet.17

Where Fascismo now stands is explained by Mussolini in a short article, under the caption “Forza e Consenso,” in the March, 1923, number of “Gerarchia,” the Fascist review. Mussolini declares that Liberalism is not the last word in the art of governing; well suited for the nineteenth century, which was dominated by the development of capitalism and national sentiment, it is not necessarily adapted to the needs of the twentieth century. Since the war our experiences have shown us that Liberalism has been defeated. Russia and Italy are proving it to be possible to govern outside, above, and contrary to, Liberal ideology. Communism and Fascism have nothing to do with Liberalism.

The premier of Italy, conscious of his strength, believes that parliamentary government has caused a general nausea in the country. Giving liberty to a few, he says, destroys the liberty of all; and he asks when it has happened in history362 that a state has rested exclusively upon the consent of the people without the use of force. Consent is as changing as the shifting sands. Take away armed force from a government, leaving it only its immortal principles, and it falls a victim to the first organized group bent upon overthrowing it. It is the right and duty of the party in power to fortify and defend itself against all opposition.

The Italians, in the opinion of Mussolini, are weary of the orgy of liberty, and that is why the younger generation is drawn toward Fascismo by its roll-call of order, hierarchy, and discipline. Men are longing for authority. After the years of war and the failure of nations with representative institutions to establish internal prosperity or international harmony, the day for strength and resolution and unswerving purpose to do for people what ought to be done for them, what they want done, but what they do not know how to do, is at hand. In peroration, Mussolini writes:

Fascismo, which did not fear in the first instance to call itself reactionary when many Liberals of to-day lay prone before the triumphant beast, has no hesitation whatsoever now in declaring itself un-Liberal and anti-Liberal. Let it be known, once and for all, that Fascismo recognizes neither idols nor fetishes. It has passed once, and, if necessary will tranquilly return, across the more or less decomposed body of the Goddess of Liberty.

363 Signor Giolitti, just before the advent of Mussolini, told the King that a party led by hesitating men, dominated by fear, could no longer hope to wield power in Italy. Signor Mussolini is certainly not dominated by fear. His minority party is supported by a majority of the people. But has not the Fascist program been hailed exuberantly at home and abroad because it is a new broom sweeping clean? The success of the Fascist reforms is not yet certain, and neither in speeches nor in action has the Mussolini Government revealed the clear outlines of a definite and constructive internal and foreign policy. What does Mussolini propose to put in place of Liberal ideology?

While not so much interested in foreign affairs as the Nationalists, and at times, in their clashes with the Blue-Shirts and the Fiume Legionaries, seemingly asserting the all-absorbing interest of Italy in internal reforms, the Fascisti have none the less made foreign policy a cardinal part of their program. They have not been avowed imperialists. They are insisting upon Italy’s equal place and dignity with other nations. The nature of the policies of premiers from Orlando to Facta has been a secondary consideration. What has incensed the Fascisti is the tendency of Great Britain and France to look upon Italy as a little brother, useful at times to help them, but not364 worth helping. Mussolini’s first entrance into international politics at Lausanne marked the change Fascismo determined to give to Italy’s foreign relations. Mussolini made Curzon and Poincaré come to him at Territet. Why should they assume that the Italian would naturally come to them?

Here public opinion in all Italian circles supports Mussolini. To the Italians it seems preposterous that either France or Great Britain should aspire to dominate the Mediterranean. Great Britain is in the Mediterranean only by right of conquest, while France has a wide Atlantic outlet. Both Great Britain and France have colonies all over the world. Italy, on the other hand, is a Mediterranean state, the only Mediterranean state among the great powers. When compared with those of her allies, her colonial possessions amount to nothing. Invoking the historic after the geographical, economic, and strategic arguments, Italy has a better claim to be the predominant power in the Near East than France or Great Britain.

Italians understand to perfection the principle of “whacking up,” and the treaty of 1915 shows that their motive for entering the war was sharing its spoils. But for them the spoils have not been forthcoming. Wherever it was a question of their share, they were confronted with the365 ideals of the war and were told that the principle of self-determination had to prevail. As an example of this cynicism, they cite Mr. Wilson’s Fiume declaration, written the same week that Shantung was handed over to Japan. And since the Peace Conference it has been explained to them that Egyptians and Moroccans have not the right to self-determination, but that Albanians have. At Paris, when Signor Orlando was pleading for Smyrna, he answered the argument of injustice to Turkey and Greece by asking the English how they justify their presence in Hong-Kong. “That was long ago,” was the answer of Lloyd George. Clemenceau assented. Signor Orlando got back at him quickly. “But do you French not base your right to Alsace-Lorraine on the ground that a title won by force cannot plead prescription?”

The Italians have learned since 1918 that to British and French statesmen there is still only one law, the law of might, and only one title, the title of conquest. Italy, not being strong, has had to bow to her more powerful allies; Italy, not having any conquests worth while, has not been able to make trades, as the French and British have done. So Italy’s Near Eastern ambitions frittered away to nothing, and the Lausanne Conference became, like previous conferences, a duel between French and British. Thoughtful366 Italians are beginning to wonder whether Italy went in on the right side in the World War. Great Britain holds Malta, and France Corsica and Tunisia. If Italy had been Germany’s ally and the Central Empires had won, Italy would have gained almost as much as she holds now at the head of the Adriatic, and if the German victors had applied the same principles as the French and British victors, with the tables turned, the war would have ended with Corsica, Malta, and Tunisia “restored” to Italy. Within the next generation will not Italy be compelled to fight Great Britain and France to avoid remaining permanently an economic slave in her own ocean?

Before Mussolini came to power the state of mind in Italy was well illustrated by the Turin “Stampa,” the organ of Giolitti. The “Stampa,” apropos of the British concessions to France and Germany in return for a free hand in the Near East, commented:

In both camps it would be the triumph of an imperialist policy which would foster new wars and end in rendering illusory the very agreement between the contracting parties.... It is not necessary to point out, besides, the injury to Italy, to Germany, to Turkey, and even to Greece (really reduced in that case to British vassalage) implied by this hypothetical division into zones of influence of the vast stretches from the Rhine to the Euphrates, from Cologne to Bagdad.

367 The Young Italian movement has something in common with the Young Turk movement and the other non-European Nationalist movements that are labeled “Young.” To win, and then to maintain a place among the nations, to stand up for one’s rights, a country must be strong. And a country cannot be strong unless the old political machine has been swept away, finances put upon a sound basis, and sweeping reforms in administration introduced. The people as a whole cannot be relied upon to do this. Thus it falls to the lot of a private organization to oppose and overthrow the existing Government by force. Lawlessness is justifiable because it is for the purpose of combating decadence and anarchy. Overriding the suffrage right of the people is justifiable, because the Government established by the revolution knows better than they do what is needed to save the country. Before the revolution the country was held in contempt among the nations. After the revolution the miracles wrought will compel the respect of other nations. Then will the country in which the beneficent revolution occurred, by being strong, assert triumphantly its rights and further its interests the world over.

368

After the German invasion, in 1914, the Belgians moved their Government from Brussels to Antwerp and then to Ostend. When the last strip of southwestern Flanders became a battle-front, they were compelled to take refuge at Havre. With the exception of Serbia, no country suffered as much during the World War as Belgium. Up to the day of the armistice the little kingdom was completely under the heel of an enemy military occupation. It was natural that the withdrawal of the Germans should have been followed by a universal outburst of nationalism in an exaggerated form, and that the Belgian people should have believed that their reward for heroic endurance was going to be great and immediate. They forgot for a moment that they were a small state, and that the disinterested gratitude of the big fellows could not be expected to go far beyond fine speeches. The Principal Allied and Associated Powers showed their affection and esteem for Belgium by changing their legations to embassies. But that is as far as it went.

369 The Belgians quickly learned that in international relations size has everything to do with power, and that gratitude for services rendered in the past plays no part in world politics. Receiving and sending ambassadors was not going to make Belgium big, while new and continued services to the interests of the great powers were to be required. The World War was past history!

The Belgians found this out when the Peace Conference opened. They were immediately relegated to the position of a “secondary state with particular interests,” and, like other small states, to get a hearing and espousal of their national aims, they had to become a satellite of one of the great powers.

When the Allied armies entered Brussels in November, 1918, they found the walls placarded with posters displaying a map, signed by the “Comité de Politique Nationale.” We looked, rubbed our eyes, and looked again. What did the Belgians hope to get for having saved the world? A drastic rectification of frontiers with Holland, Germany, and France, reconstituting the historic Belgian motherland and giving Belgium defensible boundaries. These comprised the left bank of the Scheldt to its mouth; Dutch Limburg, with Maestricht; the fourteen Walloon cantons, given to Prussia by the Treaty of Vienna370 in 1815; the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg; and a change in the Ardennes frontier with France. On first glance the only part of this program that looked at all feasible was what Belgium wanted to take from Germany. Holland was a neutral state, not mixed up in the war, and it was incredible to expect France to do anything territorially for Belgium or to allow her to incorporate the Grand Duchy. On second thought the map embodying Belgian desiderata seemed to bring up the thorny question of an unneutralized Belgium in the European political world.

When Belgium was erected into an independent state by the Treaty of London in 1839, a question that had been settled after Napoleonic wars was reopened. Great Britain, Prussia, and France were equally suspicious each of the others. Through Belgium Prussia could menace France and France Prussia. Through Belgium either Prussia or France could menace Great Britain. France had determined to keep control of the Meuse valley as far north as possible. Prussia had determined to bar the road to the Rhine. Great Britain had determined to prevent Antwerp from becoming a port of war on the North Sea. All three nations agreed to guarantee the neutrality of Belgium. But they took additional precautions. Great Britain insisted that Holland should remain in control of both banks of the371 Scheldt at its mouth. Prussia had insisted on Holland retaining a portion of Limburg and upon the separate political existence of a portion of Luxemburg. France insisted upon a tongue of land in the Ardennes on both sides of the Meuse. The three powers worked the problem out in terms of their own interests and not those of the new country. They drew the boundaries of Belgium with no regard for her strategic interests. But strategic consideration for Belgium did not have to enter in. Was she not to be neutralized?

When Belgium came to the Peace Conference her statesmen felt justified in pointing out that the common guarantee of neutrality had not worked when put to a supreme test; for the early days of the war had proved how disastrous was the control of the entrance to Antwerp in the hands of a neutral state. And, if the war had gone on, Maestricht as neutral territory would have been a tremendous handicap to the advance of Allied armies. Why, they asked, should consideration be shown to Holland now? Her neutral rôle in the World War was inglorious, and just lately her conduct in receiving the fleeing Kaiser and refusing to deliver him up to justice was an unfriendly act.

In themselves the arguments were powerful. Holland could not have resisted a united demand of the Entente Powers to consent to the revision372 of the old Treaty of London in favor of Belgium. But, even with Germany eliminated from the problem, the motives that had actuated the treaty-makers of 1839 were still alive. British and French statesmen could not build for the future on the dangerous assumption that their countries were to remain forever friends. Maestricht was a barrier that worked both ways, while the North Sea policy of Great Britain dictated more than ever, now that submarines were in vogue, the advisability of keeping Antwerp bottled up. With the Dutch East Indies at the mercy of the British fleet, Great Britain had a powerful argument that could be always used to compel Holland to maintain the neutrality of the estuary of the Scheldt.

The Entente Powers, therefore, refused to consider any revision of the Treaty of 1839 detrimental to Holland as within the province of the treaty to be imposed upon Germany, but left the matter to direct negotiations between the two countries. This, of course, amounted to a refusal to consider the Belgian suggestions at all. The Franco-Belgian frontier was also left to the French and Belgians. The Grand Duchy of Luxemburg was detached from the German customs union, of which it had been a member since 1842, and from the German railway control, which had been exercised since 1870. The political status of the duchy and its future economic373 connections were to be decided by a referendum to the Luxemburg electorate.

The fourteen so-called Walloon cantons of the Rhineland had become thoroughly Germanized during the nineteenth century. Possibly this fact in itself would not have deterred the Paris Conference from giving favorable consideration to Belgian claims. But the British, uncertain of the future affiliations of Belgium, did not want to undertake the burden of defending her against German irredentism, should she become their ally; and they did not want to make Belgium too powerful, should she become the ally of the French. The French, on the other hand, had their own program for the Rhineland. Belgium, therefore, was given only two of the fourteen cantons.

The Treaty of Versailles provided that Malmédy and Eupen should be occupied by Belgium, and that the Council of the League of Nations should decide the final disposition of these two border districts. The inhabitants were given a certain time in which to record on registers provided for that purpose their desire to remain with Germany. Few of them dared to risk this step, which would have meant confiscation of their homes and expulsion, although none of them wanted to become Belgians. This farcical scheme for preventing a plebiscite was successful. The council gravely decreed that Malmédy and Eupen,374 in view of the fact that no serious protestation was offered in the way provided for by the Treaty of Versailles, should be allotted to Belgium “by the will of the inhabitants”!

Aside from Malmédy and Eupen, Belgium gained the right to connect Antwerp with the Rhine by canal, and her war debts to the Allies were transferred to Germany’s account. In the reparations payment, a priority of two and a half billion gold marks was granted Belgium, representing the reimbursement of the extortions designated as war taxes that had been exacted by Germany during the four years of military occupation. The Belgians also received admirable help from the Entente Powers in getting back the machinery, railway rolling-stock, cattle, and other booty taken out of the country during the war.

Another great disappointment was the failure of the Peace Conference to recognize the right of Belgium to retain the territories conquered by her soldiers in German East Africa. Here President Wilson’s mandate idea was used to deny the Belgian claim. German East Africa was to be administered as a sacred trust for civilization by Great Britain. No African annexations were countenanced by the Treaty of Versailles. By dint of vigorous protest and the personal intervention of King Albert, Belgium secured a rectification of frontiers in the Kongo colony. But375 this was a matter of private negotiation with Great Britain and did not enter into the Peace Conference bargains.

The credit due to Belgium for having resisted the Germans in 1914 and for having carried on throughout the war, maintaining an army at the front despite all obstacles, was not denied by the Entente Powers, and they believed that they had done her full justice, within the limits of possibility during the Peace Conference and in the subsequent negotiations. Release from war debts, priority of reparations payments, and generous aid in getting back from Germany the loot of the war can be cited as tangible evidences of gratitude and good will. The failure to recognize the equality of Belgium in post-bellum councils rankled, however, and made it easy for politicians to turn the bitter experiences of the Peace Conference to their own benefit. Consequently we have seen in Belgium since the war the evolution of an unhappy foreign policy opposed to the political and economic interests of the country. This policy has jeopardized, almost nullified, the excellent results of the marvelous progress toward rehabilitation accomplished by the entire people in 1919 and 1920.

After the World War all the belligerents sorely needed peace, the small states even more than the great powers, and the countries that had suffered376 by enemy military occupation most of all. The Belgian Government had lived entirely on credit during an exile of four years. The normal revenues of the country had been appropriated by the enemy. The blockade had disorganized industry. Belgium’s foreign markets had been lost to the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. The carrying and transit trade had become wholly disorganized. The country was flooded with German marks, and was partly looted; 40 per cent of its inhabitants were out of work. The years of German occupation had fostered the Flemish language movement, had increased trade-unionism 300 per cent, had introduced the impersonal element in production on a large scale, and had made the people profoundly unwilling to go back to an almost feudal régime in politics and in many of the leading industries.

If ever a country needed to have a period of non-partisan government at home, freedom from military burdens, and respite from playing the game of world politics, Belgium was that country. Economic interests demanded productive activity on a large scale, unhampered access to world markets, and the revival of the wealth accruing from the transit trade through the port of Antwerp. Partly dependent on the prosperity of Germany, and geographically inhibited from playing either Great Britain or France as a favorite, the sensible377 policy for Belgium was speedy reconciliation with Germany and the reaffirmation of her old neutrality, appealing her case to the League of Nations and the United States.

Belgium was in no way in the position of France, and she could not afford to adopt toward Germany the attitude and the policy of France. France is a large and virtually a self-sustaining country, not dependent primarily upon her factories and mines, and possessing close at hand vast colonies rich in food-stuffs and raw materials and capable of being drawn upon for a standing army. On the other hand, the problem of security, in her policy toward Germany, is a prime consideration for France. Belgium is a small and thickly populated country, wholly dependent upon her industries and world markets for her existence. Much of her prosperity comes from the prosperity of western Germany because of her geographical position in relation to the Rhineland. By her own efforts Belgium can never hope to make herself militarily secure against Germany. A policy of force, applied to Germany, has the double disadvantage, then, of hurting Belgium economically and of compelling her to become politically dependent upon France. This, in turn, makes Great Britain antagonistic to her. Her economic interests, seeing that France is a highly developed protectionist country, seem to demand a378 Rhineland free of French domination, while her political interests seem to demand steering clear of dependence upon French military power for her security.

This having been said, we can grasp the dangers confronting Belgium in 1923 as a result of having followed France blindly and actively into the joint military occupation of the Ruhr against the advice and admonition of the most influential organs of the British press. How this happened is a tragic and instructive chapter in the history of Europe since 1918.

Until after the Peace Conference the Government, by common consent, was not bothered with internal political conflicts. The Socialists and Radicals showed themselves reasonable, not wanting to weaken the prestige of the Government in the peace negotiations, and compromised their demand for universal manhood suffrage, an eight-hour day, and sweeping social reforms. They agreed to a reform bill in April, 1919, by which, along with universal manhood suffrage, the Clerical contention for woman suffrage was admitted to a limited extent. They waived the demand for an eight-hour law until after the General Election. The parliamentary election, held on November 16, 1919, deprived the Clerical party of its traditional majority. A government was379 formed of ministers of the three great parties, thus preserving the union sacrée formed during the war. The premiership and ministry of foreign affairs, however, remained in the hands of the Clericals.

The Clericals, alarmed at the sudden growth in power of the Socialists, decided to gain popular support by concluding a military alliance with France and appealing to the people to back this policy through hatred and fear of Germany. A secret military treaty was negotiated by the heads of the General Staff and signed by them as a military measure, and was therefore not presented to Parliament. Contrary to the express stipulation in Article XVII of the Covenant, the text of this treaty was not communicated to the secretariat of the League and has not been published. The old neutrality, which had won Belgium the support of Great Britain and the sympathy of the world in her hour of need, was abandoned in a gamble with the future. As none in Belgium dared or cared to take a stand that would seem to encourage Germany in her evasion of the disarmament and reparations clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, the Clericals gained a tactical advantage, which might have remained with them had not France been obdurate to the Belgian plea for a less strict tariff wall. The Francophile party, however, did manage380 to secure from the French an important concession that helped for a long time to obscure the real issue.

France and Belgium were rivals for the hand of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. Belgium after the war asserted that Luxemburg was really a part of Belgium and that its political incorporation in Belgium was the logical result of Germany’s defeat in the World War. For reasons that we have given above, the Entente Powers decided on a referendum. The Luxemburgeois were asked to choose between a republic and retention of the existing constitution, and between economic union with France or Belgium. A return to the German Zollverein was forbidden; so this did not enter into the question. The people on October 10, 1919, voted by more than three to one to retain their grand-ducal form of government and to form an economic union with France. This victory France used to bargain with Belgium for the military alliance. When that was concluded, France informed Luxemburg that she did not desire a customs union. Thus the wish of the people of Luxemburg and their interests were sacrificed to a diplomatic deal in which they had no concern. Luxemburg was compelled to sign the trade agreement forced upon her and on July 25, 1921, entered the Belgian customs union for fifty years.

381 The Clericals were able to point to this great success of their policy as offsetting the growing uneasiness of the Belgians over the efforts of France to deflect the trade of Alsace-Lorraine from Antwerp to Dunkirk by discriminatory railway tariffs and by placing an extra tax on commodities carried through Antwerp.

But in November, 1921, Nationalists and Clericals suffered a severe reverse in a new General Election, although they enjoyed the advantage of proportional representation. Just before the election the withdrawal of the Socialist party from the Government had broken up the coalition. Liberals and Clericals combined in the election against the Socialists, invoking the issues of reparations and security. Despite this powerful combination and the tremendous influence of an appeal to fear and hatred in a country that had suffered so horribly and so recently, the Socialists lost only two seats in the Chamber, but they gained twenty seats in the Senate, completing the success begun in 1919. The new Parliament did not contain a Clerical majority either in the Senate or the Chamber.

In 1922 the Flemish language question came again to the fore, much to the surprise of observers, who had believed that the German espousal of this cause during the war and the vigorous repression of the Activists after the liberation had382 banished it for many years.18 So much misinformation exists concerning the nature and merit of this question that a brief statement is necessary. Since 1830, when Belgium broke away from Holland and began her existence as a modern state, the Walloons, or French-speaking Belgians, have been in the ascendancy, socially and politically. They comprise the aristocracy, most of the landowners, the political leaders of three generations, and the clergy. Higher education was given in the French language, not for love of France, but in order to prevent the political emancipation of the lower classes, most of whom were Flemish. But, with the increase of prosperity and the spread of education, Flemish-speaking Belgians became more powerful and began to demand a larger share in the political life of the country. Education in the Flemish language became a political question, and was looked upon as a means of attaining universal suffrage and emancipation from the strangle hold of the bourgeois, abetted by the Church. The Walloons deplored it and fought it383 as a subversive movement in the national life, and declared that it would result in splitting Belgium into two countries.

Then entered the foreign influences! The Dutch, speaking a language kindred to Flemish and always willing to see their southern neighbors remain weaker than they, welcomed the Flemish language movement and have done everything in their power to foster it. Similarly, the Germans, regarding the Flemish as a part of Deutschtum, hailed with glee a movement that would loosen the cultural hold of the French upon Belgium. The French, on the other hand, anti-Clerical at home, showed in the press and on the platform the deepest sympathy for the Clericals in Belgium. Gradually, in Germany and France, what was a purely internal question, provoked naturally by the rising tide of democracy in Belgium, came to be regarded as a struggle between Teutonic and French influence in an all-important strategic corner of Europe.

The World War united the Belgians against the common enemy, and the Flemish were as determined in their opposition to Germany as the Walloons. But Germany’s invasion of Belgium was, of course, a tremendous blow to the leaders of the Flemish-speaking movement. For the time being, advocacy of what was a perfectly natural and reasonable thing became playing Germany’s384 game. The demand for higher education in the Flemish language might well have remained under a cloud for a decade or more after the war had it not been for the determination of the Walloon bourgeoisie to use the advantage the war had given them to stamp out once for all the Flemish-speaking movement.

When it was proposed that the universities be separated from the Church and brought under the control of the state, an attempt was made to make them by statute purely French. What was the right of private institutions became, when these institutions were made public, a challenge to the language and the culture of a majority of the people. About 3,000,000 Belgians are Walloons, speaking various dialects of French; 4,200,000 are Flemish, of whom 3,300,000 speak only Flemish and understand no French at all. The proposal was preposterous. So the question arose again. It died down temporarily when Belgium joined France in invading the Ruhr. But it is bound to be revived in the near future with growing force. The Flemish are too tenacious in language and traditions to accept the superiority of the Walloons, now that they have the powerful instrument of equal and universal suffrage.

A growing number of intelligent Belgians, denied social equality because they are Flemish, and385 hit hard in their pocketbooks because Belgium is seconding French foreign policy, are beginning to contend that devotion to France must not be considered the test of patriotism. The Flemish did not hesitate to throw in their lot against the Teutons during the war. It never occurred to them not to do so. And now they do not see why any Walloons, just because they speak French, should subordinate the true interests of Belgium to the foreign policy of any other nation, however close in cultural ties. When you speak to them of the Flemish language movement being “pro-German” or of “playing Germany’s game,” they grow impatient with you and declare that you refuse to understand. They claim that they are fighting the great battle of democracy, that their record during the war should free them for ever from the charge of pro-Germanism, and that the triumph of their movement will not disrupt Belgium but will bring about the kind of solidarity we Americans have attained by organizing a state in which there is equality of opportunity for all men.

386

The loss of a war frequently means the loss of a throne. When Napoleon Bonaparte found that his enemies were too strong for him he abdicated and ingloriously fled, leaving his underlings and his exhausted country to face the consequences of his military adventures. A hundred years later Wilhelm Hohenzollern followed the same course and sought safety in Holland. In both instances the government did not survive the defection of its chief. In 1870 France became a republic because Napoleon III failed to fulfil the promise to lead his armies to Berlin. In 1918 Germany became a republic because Wilhelm II failed to fulfil the promise to lead his armies to Paris. In all three instances, the successor government endeavored to throw the blame of the war upon the defunct government and to use the change of régime as a plea for moderate peace terms. France got off easily in 1815. She did not do so well in 1870, owing to the triumph of the military party in the counsels of victorious Germany. And France, remembering what she387 had suffered less than half a century before, was not disposed to allow the disappearance of the “Imperial German Government” in 1918 to enable the German people to escape the full consequences of their defeat.

The pre-armistice negotiations had not yet been completed when the German navy mutinied at Kiel on November 5. Munich revolted on November 7. The revolution spread to Berlin on November 9. The movement was sponsored by the “Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council,” in which the Social Democratic party assumed the leadership. A coalition Government was formed, consisting of three representatives each of the Majority and Minority Socialists, with Herr Ebert, a member of Prince Max’s cabinet, as Chancellor. In turning over the reins of government to Herr Ebert, Prince Max announced the abdication of the Kaiser, who had “retired” to Holland. But the Kaiser did not formally abdicate until November 28.

The new Government issued a proclamation on the evening of November 9 declaring that it would “arrange for an election of a Constituent National Assembly, in which all citizens of either sex over twenty years of age will take part with absolutely equal rights.” The state of siege and the censorship were abolished; amnesty was granted for all political punishments; and the388 promise of the eight-hour day was made, to take effect not later than January 1. By acquiescing promptly to the fait accompli at Berlin, Hindenburg not only preserved discipline at the front but also defeated the hopes of the extremists (Spartacists) to make Germany Bolshevist.

At the beginning of 1919, before the Peace Conference opened, the Spartacists issued their defiance to the new Government. Rioting, incited by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, broke out in Berlin on January 5 and continued for a week. The Bolshevist revolution failed because of the hostility of the people and the loyalty of the army. Its two leaders were killed by mobs. Freed of this peril, the Government proceeded to the promised General Election on January 19, in which the remarkable total of 95 per cent of the electors voted. The Social Democratic party won 163 out of 421 seats. The National Liberals and Conservatives suffered severely; but the defeat of the extremists was more striking still. On the whole, the composition of the National Assembly was very much the same as that of the last Reichstag. The strength of the Clericals remained about the same. In Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Würtemburg local elections for constituent assemblies, held during the same month, resulted in an almost similar majority389 for the moderate Socialists and Democrats combined.

The new German Parliament opened its sessions at Weimar on February 6; and on February 11 Herr Ebert was elected president of Germany. For the premiership (the term prime minister was substituted for chancellor) Herr Scheidemann was chosen, and he succeeded in forming a strong and representative Ministry containing able men of all parties. Serious troubles arose in Munich and Berlin in March, and elsewhere in Germany in the early spring. But the people kept their heads, and there was general hope that the new Government would bring internal peace and secure a reasonable treaty.

But, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, the Peace Conference had no intention of letting Germany off easily. Nothing was done from outside to strengthen the existing Government. Rather than sign the Treaty of Versailles, Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, the foreign minister, who had gone as head of the delegation to Versailles, resigned. The Scheidemann cabinet fell. A new cabinet, less representative than its predecessor, was formed. Out of desperation the treaty was signed and was ratified by the National Assembly on July 9, coupled with a unanimous declaration390 that “in passing the Bill [to ratify the peace treaty] the House was merely submitting to the compulsion of superior force.” Two considerations primed everything, the lifting of the food blockade and the release of prisoners of war.

The new constitution for the German Republic was passed by the National Assembly on July 31. It contained a provision giving the right to representatives of Austria to sit in the Reichstag, but not to vote “until after the union of Austria with the rest of Germany.” The Entente Powers declared that this was a violation of Article LXXX of the Treaty of Versailles and ordered it stricken out. The Germans answered that self-determination had been definitely promised as a basis for the durable world peace, and that this article was intended only to provide for what would inevitably happen, when the European situation should become stabilized. But the Entente Powers, refusing discussion, issued an ultimatum; once more Germany had to bow to force.

Disastrous and humiliating as the experiences of the eight months after Germany laid down her arms had proved, the defeat had brought distinct advantages, through the revolution, to the German people. There is no cloud without its silver lining. The deposition of the Hohenzollerns had been followed by that of the other kings,391 princes, grand dukes, and princelings of the German Empire. It was a great step forward in the unification of Germany, begun by Napoleon in 1803, and continued by the Prussians between 1849 and 1866. It took a violent cataclysm to get rid of artificial divisions that had hindered the development of German national life.

Given the antipathy of the stolid, law-abiding German for engaging in Bolshevist adventures, even for the sake of avoiding the humiliation and disadvantages of a Carthaginian peace, the situation would not have been hopeless had the victors adopted a different attitude toward Germany. The Government might have been strengthened by sympathy and understanding of its great and varied problems. The people might have been assured that if they bent their shoulder to the wheel and paid for the damages they had wrought, they would be given a chance of rehabilitation. The hatchet might have been buried, and a chastened Germany welcomed back into the family of nations.

This was the policy advocated by Premier Nitti of Italy; by Lord d’Abernon, British ambassador to Berlin; and by a host of Allied officials, familiar with conditions in Germany, whom I have met on the Rhine, in Berlin, Munich, and elsewhere, since the treaty was signed. The policy is aptly expressed by Dr. Nicholas Murray392 Butler, who said to the Commercial Club of Cincinnati on April 21, 1917:

Never chant a hymn of hate against those who, for the time being, are worshiping a false god. A hymn of hate is just as displeasing in English as it is in German. We are concerned here in a conflict too solemn and too frightful to leave place for hatred; for if the issue is such as we wish it to be, we shall lift yet another nation up to the sublime plane of our own principles, a nation that is to-day powerfully armed against us.

Instead of helping the German Republic to a new life, the policy of punishment and fear was adopted, a policy outlined by Professor Andler of the Sorbonne on March 4, 1917. Said M. Andler:

Politics may have the right to continue the work of war against a preying nation, even into the time of peace.... Germany must know that this continuation of war into peace is possible if she refuses to give the reparations and pledges which the law demands. There are economic methods of breaking the arrogance of the German agrarians. There are economic methods of breaking even the new prosperity of the German peasants. There is a way of checking for ever the forward impulse of German industry and of curbing the great industrial capitalism, in coalition with the junkers and, at the same time, the German working-people who have demanded their share in the casting of the net attempted by big industries. There are certain forms of the industrial and agricultural boycott, under which the German people,393 surrounded by hostility equivalent to the worst kind of blockade, would no longer be able to continue the proud prosperity of its life before the war. The rich classes would be ruined; the people could no longer bring up their superfluity of children, formerly so easily absorbed by a flourishing industry; the peasants and laborers of the decimated population would be reduced to emigration. But they would go, these German immigrants, to countries forewarned, countries that would no longer permit any organized espionage, nor any sly infiltration into their affairs, nor any masquerade of false naturalization under the Delbrück Law. Then, perhaps, enlightened at last by the disapproval which would cause to weigh heavily on them the political system against which they had never known how to revolt and which they had tolerated in order to benefit by its military successes, they would again become the modest Germans of 1848.

The controlling idea of French policy toward Germany was simply this, that a strong, united, prosperous Germany would never be a changed Germany. The proof demanded of a change of heart on the part of the German people would be their willingness to become again “the modest Germans of 1848.” The political unity of Germany must at all costs be destroyed. This was a sine qua non of security for France, as we have explained elsewhere, and the execution of the treaty had as its principal object to prevent the economic rehabilitation and the political unity of the German peoples in Europe. In reviewing events in Germany since 1918 we must keep this394 fact in mind. No Government, whatever it accomplished, would be considered as showing works meet for repentance. The Reparations Commission, backed by a strong army, could ask whatever it wanted to ask—no limits were set either of time or amount—and thus prevent the economic and political rehabilitation of Germany.

Herr Bauer, who succeeded Herr Scheidemann just before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, formed a cabinet that lasted month after month only because the German people were morally and politically dazed. The extreme Left, demanding Bolshevism, and the extreme Right, demanding a repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles, offered hopeless anarchy. Consequently the Center parties combined against a common danger. The Government could have been stabilized and could have established its authority only by securing support from the conquerors of Germany. Hope of a reasonable settlement of the reparations issue held together the Bauer Government and enabled it to put down the reactionary Kapp coup d’état in Berlin in March, 1920. But it was immediately followed by a Spartacist insurrection in the Ruhr and elsewhere, with which Herr Bauer could not cope. For the Ruhr was in the neutral zone, and the French refused to permit Germany to use force there.

395 The new cabinet, headed by Herr Müller, could not get permission from the Allies, owing to the intransigeance of the French, to put down the Communist uprising, which threatened to make all Germany Bolshevist. In desperation, the Germans went into the Ruhr without waiting for permission and succeeded in a few days in subduing the Communists. Invoking an infraction of the treaty, and acting independently of their allies, the French seized Frankfort. Some of the occupying troops were blacks, and a machine-gun was turned on a crowd in the streets of Frankfort.

It is impossible to overestimate the effect in Germany of these events. Public opinion was convinced that France was seeking, not reparations, but the destruction of Germany. How else explain her unwillingness to allow the German Government to put down the Ruhr insurrection, whose success would have rendered any payments on the reparations account impossible? How else explain the refusal of France, a fortnight later, to accept the suggestion of Premiers Lloyd George and Nitti that the German Government be invited to confer with the Allied Governments on reparations and disarmament at San Remo? We have seen elsewhere how the British and Italians at San Remo agreed to stiffen their attitude toward Germany in return for concessions396 to Great Britain in the Near East and to Italy in the Adriatic.

The Weimar Assembly had outlived its usefulness. A new General Election was held on June 6 to choose the first Reichstag under the new constitution. While the Center parties still had a majority, it was greatly reduced, both the Right and Left gaining. The moderates were drifting to the two extremes. The Nationalist vote increased by three millions and the Minority Socialist vote by two and a half millions. This made more unstable than ever the authority of the Government, especially as the Allies at the Spa conference in July insisted upon the reduction of the German army to the treaty figure of one hundred thousand by January 1, 1921. In vain did the Germans plead that an army of one hundred thousand would make impossible the maintenance of authority and the insistence upon strict fulfilment of the treaty obligations. The Government pointed out that the only way to secure the arrest and trial of the “war criminals”—lists of whom, well up in the thousands, contained the most prominent names in the army and navy—would be for the Entente Powers to occupy militarily the whole of Germany and to take over the running of the country. For no German Government would have the means to obey this behest.

397 During the three weeks following the Spa Conference a tremendous effort was made to fulfil the disarmament clauses of the treaty, which it had been clearly shown at Spa had thus far been evaded. More than four thousand heavy guns and field-guns were destroyed, and a systematic effort was begun to disarm the civilian population. The deliveries of live stock to France and Belgium were made, and Germany began to attempt to meet the new schedule of coal deliveries, amounting to two million tons a month. The Supreme Court at Leipzig was entrusted with the trial of a few of the minor officers charged by the victors with violation of the laws of war. Some of these received prison sentences. The British representatives at the trials reported that they had been fairly conducted. The French, on the other hand, declared that the trials were a farce. Exasperated and despairing as they were over the failure to secure any modification of the Treaty of Versailles, the German people supported the Government in the efforts it made to comply with the orders of the Entente Powers. Food and raw materials the German people simply had to have to continue to exist. So a deaf ear was turned to the extreme Nationalists. The Germans were equally adverse to Bolshevism, whose horrors in Russia were described minutely in the press.

398 The year 1921, while not so perilous for the new Government from within, was marked by successive steps on the part of the Entente Powers that rendered still more difficult than before the return of Germany to economic health and political stability. On the last day of 1920 the French Government notified the German Government that the disarmament stipulation of the treaty had not been fulfilled, the principal complaint being that the Civic Guards (Einwohnerwehr) had not been disbanded in East Prussia and Bavaria. A few weeks later the Allies issued an ultimatum, fixing eight dates for the fulfilment of all disarmament demands, using the occupation of the Ruhr as a threat. The Disarmament Commission reported on June 30 that its work was over.

But the French Government declared that the surrender of existing war material and the disbanding of irregular organizations were only a part of the disarmament problem.19 Measures399 had to be taken, by continuing the control, to prevent future infractions of the treaty, and it was also essential to supervise and limit the manufacture of anything in Germany that might conceivably be used for warlike purposes, such as chemicals, Diesel motors, and a host of other things. It was maintained that all factories should be dismantled that might be easily converted into war production. This, of course, was a question that never could be settled. If carried out to its logical conclusion, it would mean the stoppage of all large-scale industrial activities in Germany, and entail the emigration of from ten to twenty-five million Germans. At the same time that disarmament was introduced as a factor in industrial control, Germany was hit by two new and crushing blows: the loss of the industrial portion of Upper Silesia; and the fixing of the total indemnity at an amount which unbiased experts of all nations declared meant inevitable default, followed immediately by the collapse of the economic life of Central Europe.

During all the reparations discussion, Germany had always maintained that the retention of Upper Silesia was indispensible to the fulfilment of reparations obligations. But the plebiscite, as400 provided for in the treaty, was held on March 20, 1921. The result was an overwhelming victory for Germany, who received 717,122 votes against 483,514 for Poland. All the towns in the plebiscite territory and most of the villages gave German majorities. All the urban districts of the central industrial region—Beuthen, Hindenburg, Kattowitz, and Königshütte—returned German majorities. This was a tremendous surprise to the Poles, who with the aid of General Le Rond, head of the Interallied Commission, and the French army of occupation (my authority for this statement is the British commissioner and British and Italian officers), rose in insurrection under Korfanty. The Germans tried to defend themselves and began to introduce volunteers in arms from the outside, as the Poles were doing. But the French Government demanded at Berlin the immediate prohibition of recruiting for the defense of Upper Silesia. No similar demand was made at Warsaw.

The Allies could come to no agreement in regard to the disposition of Upper Silesia. The question was turned over to the League of Nations, which awarded the most valuable industrial part of the territory to Poland.20 This was the401 most severe blow Germany had received since signing the fateful armistice that ended the World War. It marked the end of the hope of Germany getting on her feet and resuming her place in the family of nations by the payment of adequate reparations. But the blow to Germany was not as great as that to Upper Silesia, which was artificially divided, leaving large industrial German towns in the inexperienced hands of Poland, against whom they had voted. A new irredentist question was born.

The German cabinet resigned, but Herr Wirth consented to head a new ministry. He made clear, however, his attitude and that of his colleagues in regard to Upper Silesia in the following declaration:

The German Government sees in the territorial and economic dictates of the Entente not only an injustice which the German people has no power to oppose, but also an infringement of the Treaty of Versailles, an upsetting of the decision arrived at in Geneva and accepted by the chief Allied Powers. Against this injustice with the situation which it creates the German Government makes the solemn protest in the name of international law, the shield of the oppressed. It is only on account of the threats expressed in the note, and the desire to402 avoid as far as possible the misery which would otherwise light upon the Upper Silesian industrial district that the German Government consents to nominate the delegates [for arranging the partition with the Poles] as required by the dictate of the Powers, without thereby abandoning its previous standpoint.

The “economic dictates” were no less disastrous than the territorial ones of 1921. At the end of January a conference at Paris formulated a plan by which Germany was to pay 226 billion gold marks in forty-two fixed annuities from May 1, 1921, to May 1, 1963, and in addition forty-two varying annuities each equal to 12 per cent of German exports. This demand was communicated to Germany, with the threat that non-acceptance would involve the occupation of the Ruhr. The foreign minister, Herr Simons, told the Reichstag that these demands were impossible of fulfilment, infringed the Treaty of Versailles, foreshadowed the dismemberment of Germany, and meant the economic enslavement of the German people. Germany refused to entertain them. Seeing that economists the world over, in France as well as in other countries, regarded the proposal as absurd, the German refusal was not answered by military steps, but a new conference was called in London, at which the Germans were to be allowed to submit counter-proposals. These were unsatisfactory, and the occupation403 of Duisburg, Ruhrort, and Düsseldorf by French, British, and Belgian troops followed. Germany protested to the League of Nations, but without effect.

Appeals were made for intervention at Washington and the Vatican, but they were received coldly. The American Government pointed out that Germany should “at once make directly to the Allied Governments clear, definite, and adequate proposals which would in all respects meet its just obligations.” There is no doubt that Germany at this juncture ought to have recognized the inevitability of making supreme sacrifices in order to live up to her obligations. Whether the effort to do this was possible under existing conditions was another matter. The cabinet evidently thought that there was nothing to be done, and presented to President Ebert its resignation. In the meantime the Reparations Commission had fixed the indemnity at 132 billion gold marks, this sum coming due, as provided for in the treaty, on May 1, 1921; and a further sum of twelve billion gold marks was demanded for the reconstruction of demolished industrial works. As a guarantee, the German Government was to send immediately into occupied territory the gold reserve of the Reichsbank and other banking-houses.

The Entente Powers issued an ultimatum giving404 Germany until May 12, under threat of occupation of the Ruhr Valley, to accept unreservedly all the demands of the Reparations Commission and to obey its orders without delay. Allied armies were massed on the Rhine with headquarters at Düsseldorf.

After many efforts a new cabinet was formed on May 10 under Herr Wirth, a man of great ability, who gathered good men around him. It was just in time to accept the ultimatum and prevent the further invasion of Germany.

But the payment of the first billion marks in gold caused the mark to depreciate one third in value. The Wirth Government seemed unable to raise more money. An attempt to borrow money abroad failed. In December the Government told the Reparations Commission that it could not pay the January and February instalments. The burden under which Germany was resting was the payment of two billion gold marks annually plus an amount equal to 26 per cent of her exports. In addition she had to face deliveries in kind, of which the most important was twenty million tons of coal per annum. She had to find the money to pay for this coal, and to buy coal abroad to make up her deficiency resulting from this loss plus her loss from the alienation of Upper Silesia. How the reparations crisis developed to the breaking-point, as a result of405 the developments of 1922, is related in another chapter.

It is difficult, almost impossible, one must confess, to make a categorical statement or pass a definitive judgment upon the financial policy of successive German cabinets since the World War. In every discussion the assertion of what Germany might have done is based upon the assumption that there existed ability but not the will to do it. Just as on the Allied side reparations demands have never been based on an impartial expert estimate of German capacity to pay, and the Reparations Commission has been political and not judicial in all its decisions, on the German side the budget has not taken into account treaty obligations, and enormous sums seem to have been spent on railroads and other public work and on shipping. The industrial life of Germany was not harmed by the war. Her plants and mines remained intact. She was ready to resume business; and her industrialists succeeded, despite all the moral and political confusion related in this chapter, in keeping things going. There has been virtually no unemployment, no shutting down of factories and mines, no suspension of transportation service, in a word, no outward sign to indicate that the country was hard up and unable to pay reparations. On the other hand, one noted in Germany in 1922406 an orgy of spending, a feverish industrial activity, and the incredible return to bustling prosperity of ports like Hamburg.21 Export and import trade seemed to be thriving. In a dozen cities the Government and private concerns, principally banks, were undertaking extensive new building.

One was tempted to ask last summer, “Why does not Germany pay?” Mutilated and buffeted about as she has been since 1918, her people certainly seem to have kept their spirit, and very largely to have recovered from the starvation days following the World War. And yet, as is very clearly shown by the figures, her finances have become more and more involved until the Government faces bankruptcy. The first billion gold marks paid under the arrangement of 1921407 caused a violent downward movement in German exchange. Each successive payment accentuated this movement until the paper mark became virtually worthless. Before the end of 1922 economists were of the opinion that Germany would never be able to pay the sums her own experts suggested in their counter-proposals at Versailles in 1919.

As an economic problem, the reparations issue boils itself down to three questions: How much is Germany’s surplus per annum? How much of that surplus can be taken for reparations? How can the amount taken be transferred abroad? This is the practical side of the reparations question. To find the answers it was necessary to take into consideration basic economic laws and internal conditions in Germany. Only a healthy goose lays golden eggs. Only a strong government can tax adequately a nation that has representative institutions.

Here the moral factors enter in. The people must have the willingness to make sacrifices, and must consent to the measures adopted by the Government. In the matter of reparations, for instance, nothing could be accomplished unless the German people had impressed upon them that their moral rehabilitation and the return of Germany to the family of nations on terms of equality depended upon making the tremendous sacrifices408 necessitated by adopting the policy of paying the piper for what they had done in the World War. But we all know that “the people” have to be shown the path of duty and honor and interest. Nations are run by men of large means, with the help of the bourgeois class. Public opinion is created by the press, pulpit, and platform.

In Germany, ever since the armistice, and much more so during the last two years, the governing class has had a desperate fight on its hands simply to prevent the German people from embracing one or the other of the mad alternatives of despair, extreme Nationalism and extreme Socialism. The governing class has been successful in appealing to the instincts of order and conservation of property. But the policy of the Allies has given the capitalists no incentive or encouragement to make tremendous sacrifices. Good faith has been lacking on the side of the victors. Could it be expected on the side of the vanquished? The bourgeois class was morally sick and physically exhausted. The insistence of the Allies in calling for gold payments has ruined the salaried and investing classes throughout Germany. Until the invasion of the Ruhr reawakened national spirit, the screws put down on the Germans at French insistence had brought the country to the verge of social paralysis.

There has been loose talk of rich German industrialists409 evading taxation, and when the French and Belgians went into the Ruhr it was confidently expected that these industrialists would pay up rather than see their sources of wealth ruined. Public opinion in the United States, wrongly informed, thought the rich Germans had been “welching” and would now pay up promptly. Events have proved this belief wrong. But a study of the fiscal measures of the German Government would have demonstrated the absurdity of the assumption that the men who had a stake in the Ruhr had not been paying their taxes and that if they did so they would furnish ample means for the German Government to pay whatever the French demanded.

The German tax on fixed incomes—salaries, wages, and pensions—includes directors of companies in the Ruhr and all their high-salaried staff, officers in the army, and ministers of state. Laborers pay only 10 per cent, but the tax goes up to 60 per cent. As it is paid at the source, evasion is impossible. As for the capitalists, besides the income tax, they have been subjected to so many different levies that it would have been impossible for them to escape heavy taxation during the last four years. On top of the war profits tax came the emergency law of 1921, which put the Government in possession of 65 per cent of the largest fortunes. The forced loan law of410 1922 took 10 per cent of all fortunes above a million marks, on which no interest was to be paid for three years. The legacy duty goes as high as 70 per cent and cannot be evaded by presents made by the living, which are taxed up to 60 per cent. Increment-values pay 30 per cent, and public companies are subjected to a foundation capital tax of 7½ per cent. Then, there are dividend and corporation profit taxes. The figures would seem to show that the propertied classes in Germany are paying 90 per cent of the taxes, and could not, if they would, give more to meet reparations demands.22

Successive Cabinets since the war have been criticized for swelling the budget with enormous sums for railways and public works, for not taxing the people to the limit, for allowing the capitalists to send money out of the country. This policy, or lack of policy, has been interpreted as proof of dishonesty. But when a business Government, headed by Herr Cuno, the able shipping man, came into office in 1922, there was no longer doubt in the minds of impartial observers that Germany was ready to consent to any practicable reparations program and to put her house in order so that it could be carried out. The new411 Cuno Government, backed by Germany’s leading industrialists, received the support of the people and was ready to talk business with the Entente Powers.

But all the negotiations proved that the reparations problem was a political and not an economic one. France wanted reparations if she could get them; but she wanted security more than reparations. Public opinion in France had come to believe that the economic recovery of Germany spelled the ruin of France. Therefore, there could be peace in Europe only when the Germans became again “the modest Germans of 1848,” that is, a disunited people, content to be in a position of inferiority, military and economic, to their neighbors.

France may not have cherished these ideas at all. But the German people believed that she had them. So long as the French refrained from entering the Ruhr, the uncertainty of the situation demoralized the Germans completely. They seemed during the latter part of 1922 to be disintegrating socially, through the ruin of the bourgeois class. Then came the events of January, 1923, confronting Germany squarely with the issue, “To be or not to be.”

The blow of the Ruhr invasion fell upon Germany despite every effort made at home and abroad to stave it off. Herr Cuno had raised412 postal tariffs twice, and had made a third increase of 100 per cent on January 1, 1923. On the same date a second substantial increase was made in passenger-fares and freight-rates. By removing the control of rents, which had ruined landlords and prevented payment of taxes on land, Herr Cuno revived an involuntary body of tax defaulters. Rents now stood at twenty-seven times the 1914 rate. Taxes on small incomes rose from 1.6 to 9.3 per cent during 1922, and were promptly collected because employers used stamps. But it was estimated at the beginning of 1923 that these increases, which brought all prices to pre-war level, while wages were only half the pre-war level, would necessarily result in so radical an increase in wage scales that Germany could no longer put cheap goods on world markets. This would bring about a collapse of the fictitious prosperity.

Writing before the Ruhr invasion, the Dutch economist, Dr. Stuart, of the University of Utrecht, put the root of Germany’s problem in one short paragraph:

The cause of the desperate condition in which Germany finds herself is the impossibility of balancing her budget. The key to the inflation of the currency does not lie in the first place in the indemnity liabilities but in the further contents of the Treaty of Versailles. The reparations demands intensify the process of impoverishment and413 hasten the crisis to which it leads, but they are not the real cause of the impoverishment and of the crisis. The real cause is that an amputated Germany has been deprived of the possibility of feeding and maintaining its population of 63,000,000 souls, and the importance of the crisis which is upon us is that it will prove the awful truth of the words attributed to Clemenceau: “There are twenty million Germans too many.”

Professor Stuart believes that Germany cannot exist in her present condition, even if she pays no reparations at all! He points out, with a masterly array of figures, what has been said over and over again by the foremost British economists, that the territorial losses of Germany and the export of reparations coal have made it necessary for Germany to buy more food-stuffs than she did before the war in outside markets, and, instead of exporting coal, she has had to buy coal. On the other hand, she has lost most of her shipping. The means she formerly had of overcoming an adverse balance of trade are gone, and the adverse balance of trade is greater than ever.

Inflation warded off the collapse. But Germany’s depreciated mark has not helped her abroad, as some people think, because she has had to buy foreign currencies to meet the adverse trade balance and the reparations payments, and to pay for food-stuffs and raw materials.

Less than five years have proved that the Treaty414 of Versailles has deprived the German people of the possibility of a normal economic existence. With the Rhineland and the Ruhr cut off, it is clear that the Germans can not in the long run do otherwise than submit to the demands of the French. But the whole problem remains. Unless there is a radical revision of the Treaty of Versailles, the Germans may have to emigrate in large numbers or die or fight again.

415

None can understand the tragedy that was enacted in Asia Minor in 1922, none is fitted to pass judgment upon it, none has the right to venture an opinion on the rôle the Greeks will still play in the settlement of the Near Eastern question, without having made a serious and sympathetic attempt to follow the Hellenic national movement through the century of struggle that culminated in the collapse of the Greek armies in Asia Minor and the burning of Smyrna in September, 1922. The legend has grown that Greece is the victim of the imperialistic folly of her greatest statesman, who involved his people in ambitious dreams of conquest that were impossible of fulfilment. Admirers of Venizelos, to refute this legend, have launched another legend. They have tried to make the world believe that Greece’s disasters and humiliation are due to a pro-German king, supported by an unscrupulous group of politicians, who almost ruined his country during the World War through intrigues416 with Germany, and whose dramatic return to the throne in 1920 robbed Greece of the advantages Venizelos had secured for her in the Treaty of Sèvres.

The rival legends are based upon a threefold misapprehension of the connection between the Greek people and the little Kingdom of Greece, of the relations of the great powers with the Kingdom of Greece and the Greek people, and of the significance, internally and internationally, of the Venizelist movement since 1910.

It has been assumed by most writers that the Kingdom of Greece, as constituted after the War of Independence, marked the resurrection of the nation, and was the natural and logical outcome of a struggle for emancipation. This error came from a confusion of classical Greece with historic Greece. Up to this day it has not been realized in Occidental Europe and America that the Greek national movement does not have its inspiration in the ancient glory of Athens and Sparta, of Corinth and Thebes. The Peloponnesus and Attica and the coast-lands of the Gulf of Corinth never formed a united country, inhabited by a people enjoying a common nationhood.

The Kingdom of Greece, at the tip of the Balkan peninsula, was an artificial country, brought into being after the War of Independence, by a compromise of interests and jealousies on the part of417 Russia, France, and Great Britain. The dream of the Greeks who raised the banner of revolt against the Turks was the restoration of the Byzantine Empire, which endured for a thousand years, and not of the Greece we study about in school, which never existed as a united country. National movements are inspired by historic traditions, nurtured by religion, and grouped around a language. The connection between the Greek nation of the nineteenth century and ancient pagan Athens and Sparta is remote. Constantinople and Smyrna have been the foyers of Hellenism. The leaders in the War of Independence, who started and directed the revolt against the Turks, came from Epirus, Macedonia, the islands of the Ægean Sea, and Asia Minor.

The Kingdom of Greece was a makeshift of European diplomacy. The powers were determined to maintain, in so far as it is humanly possible to do so, the integrity of the Ottoman Empire. They feared the preponderant influence, each of the others, in the Near East. Every time a Christian subject people arose against the Turks, their efforts were directed toward preventing the success of national movements. They made use of expedients to bolster up the decaying Ottoman Empire by opposing where they could, and limiting where they could not successfully oppose, the separation of Balkan418 provinces from Turkey. This policy, justified by the consideration of keeping the peace among themselves, has been followed in every conference of European statesmen from Vienna in 1815 to Lausanne in 1923. The rising tide of nationalism in the Balkans, encouraged by the intrigues of single great powers, has been frowned upon when the great powers came together to adjust their rivalry.

More than Serbians, Rumanians, and Bulgarians, have the Greeks been victims of this policy. For the triumph of Hellenism would have meant not simply the detachment of outlying provinces but a blow struck at the heart of the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks have never had a fair chance, either by themselves or in alliance with the other Balkan peoples, to work out their own salvation. At times the great powers have intervened directly; on other occasions they have aimed to keep the Balkan peoples weak by setting them against one another. For a hundred years it has been a game of bullying, bribing, fishing in troubled waters.

Venizelos was born and won his spurs in Crete under the Ottoman yoke. He was a leader in revolutions, and his first experiences with European diplomacy convinced him that the powers were determined, for the sake of their own interests, to keep his native island under Ottoman419 sovereignty. He left Crete and entered into the political life of the little kingdom of Greece to make the kingdom a Piedmont for the unification of Hellas. The Venizelist movement from the beginning, therefore, was not interested primarily in the internal affairs of independent Greece. The Venizelists set out to regenerate and strengthen the Kingdom of Greece for the purpose of using Athens as the starting-point in a campaign to emancipate the Greeks still under the Ottoman yoke. It is impossible to call Venizelos an imperialist, who conceived grandiose schemes and wrecked his country trying to put them through. The Kingdom of Greece was not “his country.” Of the 7,000,000 Greeks in the coast-lands and islands of the Ægean, hardly more than a fourth were inhabitants of the kingdom of Greece. The movement to which Venizelos gave his name was a movement to liberate as many as possible of the 5,000,000 Greeks still under Turkish rule, beginning with his own island of Crete.

The ideas of King Constantine and his great premier were radically antagonistic; they could not be reconciled. Constantine accepted joyfully the partial liberation that came through the Balkan wars at the beginning of his reign. But he looked upon his kingdom as a country whose internal interests were paramount. His policy during the war was to steer Greece through difficult420 years by maintaining neutrality. The policy of Venizelos was to involve Greece in the war on the side of the enemies of Turkey in order that, as a result of their victory (in which he believed implicitly), Greece might be enabled to free as many as possible of the Greeks still under the yoke of Turkey. When the Allies deposed King Constantine in 1917, Venizelos brought Greece into the war to fight for the redemption of the Ottoman Greeks and the completion of the unification of the nation.

At the Peace Conference no representative of a smaller state had a stronger case than Venizelos. In taking territories away from Germany and Austria and Hungary the Conference went back to the Middle Ages to allow historic claims. Ports were taken from the vanquished on ethnological grounds, even when the hinterland was of another character; and where the inhabitants were not of the nationality of the claimant state, ports were taken away on economic grounds, the self-determination argument being justified by the hinterland! In the changes in Europe there could not be adduced the additional argument of Venizelos, that liberation from the vanquished meant security of life and property and a greater degree of prosperity. And yet the Entente Powers, at one in their determination to despoil Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians, hesitated421 a little about the Bulgarians and a long time about the Turks. In the atmosphere of the Peace Conference none dared say a word in favor of mitigating the harshness and injustice of the terms imposed upon Germans, Austrians, and Hungarians. But a strong current in favor of the Turks set in; and, had there not been the necessity of placating the Serbians to reconcile them to the Italian demands, the Bulgarians would have got off more easily than they did.

Venizelos was an outstanding figure among the statesmen gathered at Paris. He had the ear of Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Wilson. The American President eagerly enlisted his support in drafting and forcing the adoption of the League of Nations Covenant. Orlando, worried to the breaking-point by the Adriatic question, intimated his willingness to meet the Greeks half-way or more in the questions of Epirus and the Dodecanese. Resisting the evident intention to put him off until after Germany and Austria were dealt with, Venizelos succeeded in getting before the Council of Ten and later the Big Four the aspirations of Hellenism.

What little measure of success the Greek premier attained, however, was due to his personal influence and not to affection for Greece, nor to gratitude or confidence. French intrigues against Greece were second only to those of the422 Italians, who had a natural reason for opposing Greater Greece with as much energy as Greater Serbia. The latter was a more real danger for Italy, as it would bring the Slavs to the Adriatic; but the former was viewed with alarm as a commercial and naval rival in the eastern Mediterranean. Despite the Saloniki revolution and the tardy entrance of Greece into the war, the French were not ready to forgive the so-called massacre of December 1, 1916, when their marines, entering Athens, were greeted by a rain of bullets. Powerful influences at work in British as well as French diplomatic circles, were felt at the Conference, to prevent the despoiling of Turkey at the expense of Greece, for fear of offending Mohammedan sentiment in India and North Africa.

The withdrawal of the Italians in a huff after Wilson’s sensational Fiume declaration gave the Greeks an unexpected opportunity to anticipate the formal decision of the Conference on their claims in Asia Minor. Lloyd George heard that the Italian Government was planning to send an expeditionary corps to Smyrna in order that the Peace Conference might be confronted with a fait accompli. He persuaded Clemenceau and Wilson that the only way of preventing the contemplated Italian coup would be to have Greece occupy Smyrna and the immediate hinterland in the423 name of the Allied and Associated Powers. Venizelos was summoned suddenly to the Quai d’Orsay, and the proposal was put before him. Lloyd George urged its acceptance. Venizelos agreed. The plans were secretly worked out by the British, French, American, and Greek military advisers.

Greek troops were landed at Smyrna on May 14, 1919, and, after seven weeks of disorders and some severe fighting, the Greek army was in possession of the Smyrna region and had extended its occupation along the railway lines to the limits of the province of Aïdin. The press was fed with lurid stories of massacres by both Greeks and Turks, for which, on both sides, there seemed unfortunately to be substantial foundation. The Greek army asserted that it was fired upon in Smyrna, and had to retaliate. The soldiers undoubtedly got out of hand. But order was quickly restored. Most of the atrocities in the province seemed to have been due to the local native population, Mohammedan and Christian.

After the occupation of Smyrna a whole year passed before Venizelos was able to get the Entente Powers to agree upon the terms of peace to be imposed upon Turkey. In the meantime, as is recorded in the next chapter, a formidable Turkish Nationalist movement was allowed to get under way, in the interior of Asia Minor,424 which added to the difficulties of the negotiations and began to menace the Greek hold on Smyrna. The Paris Conference adjourned in November, 1919, without having adopted a draft for the Turkish treaty. Holders of Turkish bonds, actual and expectant holders of concessions in Constantinople and Asia Minor, and British and French officials interested in the Mohammedan colonies, brought constant pressure to bear to prevent the partition of the Ottoman Empire. After a brief visit home, Venizelos was compelled to return to Europe to participate in the continuation conferences.

Not because they were agreed or believed they had discovered a satisfactory solution of the Turkish question, but because it was impossible to delay decisions further, the Entente premiers adopted at San Remo, in April, 1920, a draft treaty that had been over a year in the making. The Turkish treaty terms had become a matter of bargaining. France and Italy assented to the draft, which seemed to favor Great Britain, because Lloyd George promised to back France in putting the screws down on Germany both as to disarmament and reparations and to let Italy settle the Adriatic question by direct negotiations with Jugoslavia. The Treaty of Sèvres, whose main terms we gave in an earlier chapter, was signed on August 10, 1920, after much haggling.

425 The Nationalists had refused to recognize the authority of the Constantinople Government to enter into a treaty in the name of the Turkish people, and had for several months been defying both the Sultan and the Entente Powers. They had attacked the British, who were occupying and running the Anatolian Railway from Constantinople to Eski Sheïr, and had driven the British troops back to the Gulf of Ismid, within sight of Constantinople. In this emergency the Entente Powers called upon Greece, who was to be the principal beneficiary of the treaty. In June the Greeks marched northeast from Smyrna and, in a short campaign, came to the aid of the British. They occupied Brusa on July 8. The Turkish Nationalists were also defying the Entente in Thrace. After the victories in Asia Minor, the Greeks moved part of their army across the Ægean Sea and occupied all of Eastern Thrace. King Alexander entered Adrianople on July 25.

By the Treaty of Sèvres the Greeks were awarded Smyrna, with a generous hinterland, and Thrace almost up to the defenses of Constantinople. Constantinople and the Straits were to enjoy a special status, under international protection, with only the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan. Greece was confirmed in possession of all the islands of the Ægean, except those at the426 mouth of the Dardanelles. Italy retained only Rhodes, with the proviso that a plebiscite should be held fifteen years after the cession of Cyprus by Great Britain to Greece. Since the British had made no promise to cede Cyprus, however, the main object of the Greek fight for the Dodecanese was not attained.

The Treaty of Sèvres, had it been maintained, would have been a great step forward in the realization of the Greek dream to revive the Byzantine Empire. What it actually gave Greece was not, however, as much as the Treaties of St.-Germain, Trianon, and Neuilly had given her Balkan allies, Serbia and Rumania. If the awards to Greece were absurdly generous and unjustified and ought not to have been made at the expense of a vanquished nation, what shall we say of the awards to Serbia, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, and Poland? If the Treaty of Sèvres had been applied, neither in territory and mineral and other wealth nor in alien population would Greece have received nearly as much as these other smaller states.

Greece’s titles, as recognized by the Treaty of Sèvres, were not only more just but better earned than the titles of the other states under the other treaties. What Greece received she had actually conquered by her own efforts. And if the titles were to prove valid and permanent it would also427 be by her own efforts. As early as March 6, 1920, Venizelos reported to his Government that no British military support would be available to keep Greeks either in Thrace or Asia Minor, and that no assistance could be expected from France or Italy. If or when the Treaty of Sèvres was signed, the Greeks would have to rely upon themselves to enforce it. On June 15, two months before the Treaty of Sèvres was accepted by the Constantinople Government, Lloyd George again asked Venizelos if he thought Greece could take over the territories in question and defend them from the Nationalists. The Greek premier’s answer was the triumphant march on Brusa and the expulsion of the Nationalists from Thrace.

Two days after the Treaty of Sèvres was signed, an attempt was made to assassinate Venizelos as he was taking the train in Paris to return to Greece. He was in poor physical condition when he got back to Athens and found internal conditions in a very bad state. The head of a Government cannot be away two years on an end and have things run smoothly at home. His subordinates had abused their authority. There was profound dissatisfaction, which was not allayed when the Greek people discovered that the net result of the treaty was the Entente Powers’ permission for Greece to work out her428 own salvation in Asia Minor. Several classes in the army had already been in active service for eight years. A wave of war weariness swept the country, of which the partizans of the banished Constantine took full advantage. When Venizelos was struggling against these handicaps, which were enough to tax his ability and enthusiasm to the utmost, King Alexander suddenly died. His younger brother Paul refused to return and take the throne. The issue at the General Election thus became a personal one between Constantine and Venizelos. The ex-king’s party won at the polls on November 14, 1920. Venizelos left Greece. On December 19 King Constantine and Queen Sophie, sister of ex-Kaiser Wilhelm, returned to Athens.

Before the return of the King the British, French, and Italian Governments issued a proclamation stating that the recall of King Constantine could only be regarded as ratification by the Greek people of the actions of the King, which had been hostile to the Allies, and that the recall of the King would create an unfavorable situation between Greece and the Entente Powers. After this proclamation a plebiscite was held on December 5. There were a million votes, virtually all in favor of the King.

Great Britain, France, and the United States429 refused to recognize Constantine.23 Notwithstanding the fearful handicap the return of Constantine imposed upon Greece in her struggle to retain what the Treaty of Sèvres had given her, Constantine persisted in his determination to remain on the throne. Only after the revolution that followed the collapse of the Greek armies in Asia Minor in September, 1922, did Constantine withdraw. Then he abdicated in favor of his oldest son, George, who had recently married Princess Elizabeth of Rumania, and went into exile in Sicily, where he died a few months later.

Speculation as to what would have happened in Greece had Venizelos remained in power is profitless. Therefore, we shall limit ourselves to the story of what actually happened.

On January 4, 1921, in the absence of all Liberal or Venizelist members, King Constantine opened the newly elected Chamber of Deputies and stated that the war in Asia Minor would continue. As a matter of fact, the Greeks could not have withdrawn; and at the same time, in order430 not to withdraw, they had to go forward. On January 10, the Greeks advanced over the mountains to Biledjik on the Anatolian Railway, cutting off Angora from the Bosphorus. In a conference at London on March 9, the Athens Government rejected a proposal of the British and French Governments to modify the Treaty of Sèvres by the Greek evacuation of Asia Minor in return for Turkish Nationalist assent to the cession of Thrace to Greece. A new offensive was launched on March 23, which succeeded in giving the Greeks possession of two important junction-points of the Anatolian Railway, Afium-Karahissar and Eski Sheïr, which they were afterward compelled to abandon. In the early part of July, however, they returned to the attack, reoccupied the ground lost in the spring, and won decisive victories at Kutahia and Eski Sheïr. Encouraged by these victories, the Greek General Staff made the mistake of believing that it was possible to march on to Angora and put an end to Turkish resistance. The offensive was renewed in the middle of August, was carried along the Sakaria River nearly to Angora, but could not be maintained on the last lap of a march that had cost them dear. The Greeks retreated to positions east of the Anatolian Railway and dug themselves in for the winter in strong natural positions.

431 Several efforts were made to mediate between Greece and Turkey by the Supreme Council, the League of Nations, and the Conference of Ambassadors. The last proposal, formulated in March, 1922, was virtually the same as that of March, 1921, i. e., that the Turks should have Asia Minor, while the Greeks should keep Thrace. In recognition of the growing power of the Turkish Nationalists, the Entente Powers offered modifications in the Sèvres provisions concerning Constantinople and the Straits that would salve the pride of the Turks and leave them nominal masters in their own house. The Turks were also offered membership in the League of Nations.

The successive efforts of the Entente Powers to bring about a peaceful liquidation of the Greek venture in Asia Minor by a voluntary revision of the Treaty of Sèvres proved that the San Remo agreement of 1920 had failed, and that the victorious powers, unable to arrive at an understanding, preferred to sacrifice the aspirations of Hellenism and to allow the Turks to go unpunished rather than risk seeing one of themselves best the others in a division of the Turkish spoils. Other factors also entered into the Near Eastern question to make it as complicated in 1922 as it had always been. The rôle of Russia at Angora was disquieting. The Turkish Nationalists were menacing Great Britain and France in Mesopotamia432 and Syria. London was suspected by Paris and Rome of planning to use the Greeks as agents to hold Western Asia Minor and the Straits in the interest of the mistress of the seas. French statesmen felt that backing the Turks might prove to be an excellent means of keeping the British in line to continue putting the screws down on Germany. In vain the Greek Government protested that the Treaty of Sèvres was an integral part of the Paris settlement and as sacred as the other treaties. Had not the Greeks acted in good faith in going into Asia Minor at the request of the great powers? Could they be expected to withdraw and leave the Anatolian Christians, the Circassians, and the anti-Kemalist Turks, who had coöperated in the occupation, at the mercy of the Angora Nationalists?

From a purely military point of view the Greeks were in an excellent position in Asia Minor. Behind most of their front lay railway lines. They had had a year in which to fortify their front and organize lines of communication. The Turks had not molested them. They had been able to pick out the strongest natural defenses. But they had no money. The boycott of the Constantine Government prevented them from contracting loans or obtaining large credits for supplies abroad. They knew that France and Italy had made treaties with the Turks and were supplying433 them with artillery and munitions. They knew, too, that Soviet Russia was giving substantial aid to their enemies. France and Italy did not allow the Greeks to establish an effective blockade of the coast of Asia Minor. The blockade rules which the French and Italians had proclaimed in the Mediterranean, when they were fighting Turkey, and had imposed upon Greek commerce, were declared intolerable when Greece tried to use them to prevent the Turks from receiving war materials.

The Athens Government grew desperate. Every month the Turks were becoming stronger, and yet it seemed impossible to order the evacuation of Asia Minor. The British Government, and British public opinion in general, encouraged the Greeks but only with words! In July the Greek Government transferred 40,000 of its best troops from Asia Minor to Thrace, and massed them, together with the Thracian army of occupation, near Constantinople. A note was sent to the Entente Governments, demanding permission to occupy Constantinople. It was a grand-stand play, conceived as a supreme effort to avert impending disaster. The Entente Powers refused to accede to the Greek request.

At the end of August, realizing that they could not last through another winter in their positions east of the Anatolian Railway, the Greeks prepared434 to fall back on a line within the limits of the zone defined in the Treaty of Sèvres. The Turks got wind of the plan and attacked at the most vulnerable point in the Greek front, where the railway from Smyrna joined the Anatolian Railway at Afium-Karahissar. Panic started and spread, as panic always does. The Greeks became demoralized and abandoned their strong positions without fighting. They retreated to the Ægean coast, burning towns and villages as they went. Most of the army got away to the Ægean islands and to Thrace. But they lost all their artillery and stores, and left the native Christians and Mohammedan Circassians, who had made common cause with the Greeks, to the mercy of the Turkish Nationalists. The demoralization of the Greek army was not so great as that of the Italian army at Caporetto, and, in numbers of troops affected, no greater than that of the British and French in the last German offensive in France in the spring and early summer of 1918. Had there been reserves to fall back upon, had there been strong allies to come to the rescue, the Greeks could easily have retrieved their fortunes. We must remember this in judging them. But years of facing great odds alone, with no hope of a change, had ended by taking the heart completely out of them.

The events of September, 1922, proved to be a435 greater blow to Hellenism than the fall of Byzantium in 1453 or any other of the vicissitudes suffered by the Greeks in the original Turkish conquest of Asia Minor and the Balkans; for the Turks resolved this time to stamp out Hellenism for good and all. The burning of Smyrna was accompanied by wholesale massacres. The expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace followed the signature of an armistice at Mudania on October 10. The negotiations were carried on between the Entente Powers and the Turks. Greece, by her defeat, had been eliminated and was forced to accept the loss of Eastern Thrace in order to secure the armistice.

Before the Mudania Conference, when it was learned that the Entente Powers had sent a note to Kemal Pasha, leader of the Turkish Nationalists, offering to restore Eastern Thrace to Turkey as one of the conditions of peace, a revolution broke out among the Greek soldiers who had found refuge on the island of Mytilene. The troops demanded that they be escorted to Athens. Under the joint leadership of Colonels Gonatas and Plastiras, they arrived in Greece on September 26, forced the abdication of Constantine, and accepted Crown Prince George as King, on condition that he promise to regard his father’s abdication as final and to place the Government436 in the hands of the revolutionary committee they had formed. The first act of the revolutionaries was the arrest of former premiers and ministers whom they regarded as responsible for the Asia Minor disasters. These, they asserted, would be tried for high treason. The new masters of Greece declared that they would not give up Eastern Thrace. Only on this condition, however, could they secure the intervention of Venizelos, who knew the futility of attempting to renew the war and further indispose the Entente Powers.

After the evacuation of Eastern Thrace in October, Venizelos consented to represent Greece at the new peace conference, which was to open at Lausanne on November 20. The evacuation of Adrianople, which began on October 15, created immediate difficulties for the new Government. Had it not made the revolution for the avowed purpose of saving Thrace? Martial law had to be proclaimed. Then, to appease popular excitement, the revolutionary leaders began the investigation of the causes of the disaster. A committee reported on November 8 that all the anti-Venizelist Governments, from 1915 to 1922, were guilty of high treason because they had alienated the sympathies of the Entente Powers during the World War and since, because they had blindly supported Constantine, because they had neglected to comply with the requests and437 demands of the Entente Powers in regard to Asia Minor, because they had concealed from the people the successive warnings as to the impracticability of holding their foothold in Asia Minor, and because they had permitted an occult government to exist in Greece under Prince Nicholas, in defiance of the constitution. Another brother of the ex-king, Prince Andrew, was arrested on the charge that he was immediately responsible for the recent disaster. The report demanded that six ex-premiers and ex-ministers, Admiral Goudas, and General Hadjianestis, commander-in-chief of the Greek army in Asia Minor, be tried for high treason before a special court martial.

Greek statesmen, including Premier Krokidas, who had consented to serve under the revolutionary Government, begged that before the sentence was announced there be granted right of appeal to a National Assembly, which was to be elected in the near future. Krokidas resigned when the plea was rejected. On November 25 Colonel Gonatas, unable to get a civilian to take the office, assumed the premiership himself. Three days later former Premiers Gounaris, Stratos, and Protopapadakis, former Foreign Minister Baltazzi, former War Minister Theotokis, and General Hadjianestis were condemned to death and fined sums amounting to the confiscation of their438 private fortunes. A few hours later they were shot. Prince Andrew escaped the death sentence; but he was banished after military degradation.

The execution of the former ministers aroused a storm of protest in Greece and abroad. The British minister left Athens, and the Greek minister at Washington cabled his resignation. But Colonel Plastiras, Chief of the Revolutionary Committee, not only assumed responsibility, in the name of the committee, for what had happened, but declared that all persons, civilian and military, connected with the Asia Minor disaster would be brought to trial. He denied the charge that the court martial was not a proper means of decreeing punishment. He announced, moreover, that the General Election would be indefinitely postponed.

It was feared that the political executions, coming at the beginning of the Lausanne Conference, would increase the already unfavorable international situation of Greece. But Venizelos stuck at his task, fought hard to save what he could, and through both periods of the conference, lasting weary months, he watched for every opportunity to profit by the resentment aroused among all the Entente delegates by the unreasonableness and insolence of the Turks. Other patriotic Greeks abroad, following the example of Venizelos,439 accepted and supported, even where they could not defend, the Revolutionary Committee. They felt that the debacle of Hellenism would be rendered complete if there were a new outbreak of civil war in their unhappy country. There had been too much of political strife during the years of miraculous expansion.

The two preoccupations of Greece in 1923 have been the care of refugees and the reorganization and strengthening of the army.

The refugee problem became acute immediately after the retreat. Hundreds of thousands of Greeks, Circassians, and Armenians, and a large number of non-Kemalist Turks fled pell-mell to the coast, overcrowded Chios, Mytilene, and Samos, and flowed over to Athens and Saloniki in a never ceasing stream. To these were added refugees from Thrace. Then came the Christians expelled from the Black Sea littoral. The Turks had retained, and deported into the interior for labor battalions, the able-bodied men and boys. The Greek refugee situation developed much the same as the earlier Armenian problem—countless thousands of women, children, and old people, incapable of earning their own living, even were there a chance to do so.

As virtually all the Christian population of Asia Minor and Thrace had fled or had been exiled, Greece within a few weeks saw her population440 increased by between 1,200,000 and 1,300,000 wholly dependent immigrants, bringing disease with their poverty. They came at the beginning of winter. All needed shelter, food, clothing, bedding, and medical attention. The problem was appalling, and it still threatens to overwhelm Greece in the summer of 1923. There is little hope of these refugees’ being able to return to their homes. How can a country, not self-supporting, bankrupt, and without credit abroad, take care of a 20 per cent increase in its population, not of able-bodied men, but of dependents? Charity, notably that administered by the Near East Relief, has kept the refugees from starving and freezing. It cannot continue indefinitely, however, and very many Greeks believe that salvation lies in a new test at arms with the Turks. They are by no means convinced of the military superiority of the Angora Nationalists, unless they are helped, as they were last time, from the outside. The Greeks still have their fleet, which gives them mastery of the sea. If not interfered with, they can blockade the Turks.

The lesson of the protracted and fruitless negotiations at Lausanne seems to be that force alone counts for anything in international relations. Throughout the discussions the attitude of the Turks was that of defiance, and only military441 threats brought them to a compromise. The best argument Venizelos had was the fact that 150,000 Greeks were still under arms, most of them in Western Thrace, with their morale restored, and ready to try again. This prevented the Turks from prodding him too hard, and this alone made the Entente Powers willing to consider that, despite the debacle of 1922, there might still be a promising future for Hellenism, and some profit to be had for friends of the Greeks.

442

No armies were so decisively defeated in the closing months of the World War as those of Turkey. The British retrieved their reverses in Mesopotamia, while General Allenby, in the Palestinian campaign, succeeded in striking a death-blow to Turkish military domination over the Arabic-speaking portions of the Ottoman Empire. When it was realized at Constantinople that Germany had come to the end of her resources, Talaat and Enver, who had been in the saddle throughout the war, resigned and got away. A new cabinet immediately entered into negotiations for an armistice, but tried to delay capitulating in order that Turkey might have the advantage of the conditional surrender Germany was manœuvering to make. This proved to be impossible. On October 30, 1918, the Sultan’s delegates agreed at Mudros to Allied occupation of the Straits and Constantinople, as well as of the Taurus tunnel system on the Bagdad Railway, and to the immediate demobilization of the Turkish army, the surrender of the fleet, the443 withdrawal of Turkish armies from the Caucasus, Persia, and Cilicia, and the capitulation of Turkish garrisons and officers with indigenous troops in Arabia, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Tripolitania.

After the armistice British armies entered the Caucasus, penetrated Mesopotamia to Mosul, and passed through Syria into Cilicia. Entente fleets appeared in the Bosphorus; garrisons were disembarked for Constantinople; and Allied contingents took possession of the Dardanelles forts. The British extended their control from the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus along the Anatolian Railway to Eski Sheïr.

A prompt peace settlement, such as was imposed upon Germany, would have compelled the Turks to yield to every demand of the Entente Powers. But, as we have seen elsewhere, suspicions and rivalries of the Entente Powers delayed the presentation of a treaty to Turkey. Nearly two years passed before the Turks were forced to sign the Treaty of Sèvres. In the meantime, the Entente Powers had invited Greece to occupy Smyrna and to drive the Turks out of Thrace. The Greek expedition to Asia Minor met with opposition from the beginning, and to break it down the Greeks were gradually drawn into the interior of the country. Syria and Cilicia were handed over to the French, and the British444 were compelled to abandon the Caucasus and northern Persia to Soviet Russia.

Before the summer of 1920 there was already a wide divergence of opinion on the Near Eastern question among the Entente Powers, and the Turks, under Mustafa Kemal Pasha, had reorganized an army and were defying the Sultan’s authority in the interior of Asia Minor. These significant changes did not deter the Entente Powers, however, from rejecting the pleas of the Turks for mitigation of the peace terms in much the same language they had used to Germany a year before.

In view of what has happened since, it is interesting to observe that the Supreme Council, in June, 1920, told Turkey that the Allies were quite unable to agree that Turkey had any less responsibility for the war than the countries to which she had been allied. In fact, they declared that she was “guilty of peculiar treachery to Powers which for more than half a century had been her steadfast friends,” and that she had entered the war “without the shadow of excuse of provocation.” The Allied note went on to say:

Not only has the Turkish Government failed to protect its subjects of other races from pillage, outrage, and murder, but there is abundant evidence that it has been responsible for directing and organizing savagery against people to whom it owed protection. For these reasons the445 Allied powers are resolved to emancipate all areas inhabited by non-Turkish majority from Turkish rule. It would neither be just nor would it conduce to lasting peace in the Near and Middle East that large masses of non-Turkish nationality should be forced to remain under Turkish rule. The Allies can make no modification in the clauses of the treaty which detach Thrace and Smyrna from Turkish rule, for in both areas the Turks are in a minority. The same considerations apply to the frontiers fixed between Syria and Turkey. For the same reason they can make no change in the provisions which provide for the creation of a free Armenia within boundaries which the President of the United States will determine as fair and just.

The Entente Powers pointed out that they had been generous in leaving the Turks in Constantinople and that, “in view of the misuse made by the Turks of their power in the past, the Allies have had grave doubts as to the wisdom of this step.” A threat and ultimatum ended the discussion:

If the Turkish Government refuses to sign the peace, still more, if it finds itself unable to reëstablish its authority in Asia Minor, or to give effect to the treaty, the Allies, in accordance with the terms of the treaty, may be driven to reconsider this arrangement, by ejecting the Turks from Europe once and for all.

The sudden change in the attitude of the Entente Powers toward Turkey, beginning only a few months after these words were uttered, demonstrates446 their insincerity. They were not inspired by moral indignation, by a desire to liberate subject peoples, or by a knowledge of or belief in the ability or willingness of the three Powers, acting together, to coerce the Turks. The British hoped that the Greeks by their own efforts would be able to crush the rising Turkish Nationalist movement. The French thought that if they yielded to the British, and agreed to give the Greeks a chance, they would have British approval and probably British aid in the policies they wanted to adopt in regard to Turkey.

Beyond the reach of the guns of the Entente fleets, a group of virile Turkish military men, which included most of the officers of the partly disbanded army, was issuing manifestos, appealing to the people against the Government and warning the Sultan and his ministers not to sign the Treaty of Sèvres. When the Turkish delegation at Paris put their names to the treaty, the Turkish Nationalists pronounced it null and void, just as the German junkers have pronounced the Treaty of Versailles null and void. The difference between the Turkish and German Nationalists is that the latter have not yet come to the point of repudiating their Government and starting a revolution. The Turkish Nationalists severed their allegiance to the Constantinople Government and held elections for a National Assembly.447 This body met at Angora, formally denounced the Treaty of Versailles, and set forth their program in a National Pact, for the realization of which they swore solemnly to fight, and, if necessary, to die.

Because this document has been the “irreducible minimum” in the negotiations with the powers at Lausanne, it is important to have a clear knowledge of its terms. The Pact contains six articles:

1. The fate of the portion of the Ottoman territory which was under enemy occupation at the time of the conclusion of the armistice in October, 1919, will inevitably be regulated by plebiscite, the territory in question being inhabited by an Arab majority. Those portions of the Ottoman territory within as well as outside the armistice line which are inhabited by Ottoman Mussulman majorities, united among themselves by religion and racial ties and by a common ideal as well as by sentiments of mutual respect, constitute an indivisible whole, division whereof is impossible, either in theory or in practice.

2. We accept a new plebiscite, if necessary, for the three districts, Kars, Ardahan and Batum, which joined themselves to the mother-country by vote of their inhabitants just as soon as they recovered their liberty.

3. The adjustment of the question of Western Thrace, which has been disputed with Turkey up until the conclusion of peace, will be made the subject of a plebiscite executed with the fullest liberty to its inhabitants.

4. The safety of Constantinople, headquarters of the Mussulman caliphate and capital of the Ottoman Empire,448 as well as that of the Sea of Marmora, must be assured. This condition once complied with, Turkey must then treat with the Allied authorities the subject of opening the Straits to world commerce.

5. The rights of minorities will be guaranteed by us in the hope that the same rights will be granted to the Mussulman populations in contiguous territories. The question of guarantees will be subject to the same laws and principles which have been established between the Entente and its enemies and between the Entente and some of its allies.

6. Our highest and most vital principle is to have entire independence, with which, as in the case of all other countries, we shall be able to develop ourselves both socially and economically. We are opposed to all restrictions which are but obstacles to our political, judicial, and economic development. The terms of the payment of our debts, which will certainly be settled, must not be contrary to the spirit of this principle.

The terms of the Pact are in essence a declaration of independence from foreign control. They ignore the fact that Turkey lost the war, and should therefore expect to share the humiliations of her allies by being subjected to penalties and indemnities. As the Entente Powers have discovered at Lausanne, the Angora Government repudiates responsibility for the World War, and the logical consequences of defeat. The Turks who gathered for the adoption of a program of resistance to the Entente Powers and Greece in the autumn of 1920 assumed that their revolutionary449 government was the rightful heir to all the titles and privileges of the old Ottoman Empire, but to none of its treaty obligations and its responsibilities in connection with the lost war or the horrible massacres and deportations of Greeks and Armenians during the war.

The four territorial articles of the Pact in no sense constitute a confession of the altered position of Turkey because of her defeat. The Arabic-speaking portions of the Empire are not given up. They are to decide their future by a plebiscite, regardless of the mandates of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations. The result of the plebiscite might well be a decision to remain within the Ottoman Empire. Aside from the Arabs, there is no question of a plebiscite, except for the three provinces of the Caucasus which Turkey held in the last year of the war. “Portions of the Ottoman territory within as well as outside the armistice line ... constitute an indivisible whole.” This means the flat denial of Kurdish, Armenian, and Greek aspirations. Article 3 calls into question the line agreed upon in the Treaty of London with the Balkan states in May, 1913. Article 4 admits in regard to the Straits only what had always been an international privilege, the “opening of the Straits to world commerce.”

Article 5, dealing with minorities, establishes450 the principle of reciprocity. The Turks hope for reciprocal guarantees with neighboring states, and they refuse to assent to any more specific guarantees than those the Entente Powers cause to be inserted in the treaty with enemy states and the smaller countries that were to profit by the dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire.

The Nationalists rightly call “our highest and most vital principle” the abolition of the capitulatory régime that had been in force, in the relations of Turkey with Occidentals, since the beginning of the Empire. Article 6 asserts the intention of the Turks to insist upon full economic and social independence in their own country, which means the abolition of the capitulations, tariff control, and the mortgage of the Imperial Ottoman Debt upon certain monopolies and revenues.

How was a defeated country, whose capital and regularly constituted government were at the mercy of the enemy, whose principal port and the railways leading to it were in the hands of the Greeks, and which had no fleet to challenge the Greek and Allied mastery of the sea, to realize this ambitious program? The declarations of Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his followers seemed to be absurd, in view of the military situation. The Nationalists were well officered, and the Turks are natural fighters. But they had no artillery451 and no airplanes, and lacked both transportation facilities and factories to manufacture war materials. Certainly the Angora Government could hope for no miracles of valor to offset the handicap of a lack of the tools of modern warfare. The era had passed when the willingness and ability to fight and the possession of fighting men could influence, without other contributing factors, the course of history. Had the Turks been treated by the Entente Powers as the other enemies were treated, the Angora movement would have had no significance, and the National Pact would never have been important enough to be quoted in full in an English book. The star of Turkish Nationalism arose and attracted attention, and was able finally to twinkle impudently at every one at Lausanne, because Russia, France, and Italy were quick to see the opportunity the Mustafa Kemal Pasha group afforded for advancing their own interests in the Near East and in world politics generally.

Russian emissaries appeared at Angora soon after the movement started, and the Nationalist leaders found how much they really had in common with the Bolshevists: bitter hatred of the capitalist countries whose exploitation of Turkey had led to her enslavement and virtual dismemberment. The Turks joined the Bolshevists in invading Armenia. Russian Armenia had to accept452 a Soviet form of government, and renounce the hope of annexing any part of the Ottoman Armenian provinces. The Turks recognized Soviet Armenia and the Soviet Republic of Adjaristan. The latter were nothing more than the port of Batum and its immediate hinterland. The Turkish frontier was twelve miles from Batum, which became the principal port for Moscow aid to Angora.

With Russian help the Nationalists were able to attack the French in Cilicia. The French were driven out of Marash, and, after a pitched battle on the Bagdad Railway, north of Alexandretta, the French retired from Cilicia altogether, leaving to the mercy of the Turks the Armenians, whom they had formed in battalions to help them fight, and abandoning enormous war supplies of every kind. Charges have been made that the French left these supplies purposely, and also that they abandoned the Armenians when the military situation did not necessitate their doing so. Color was given to the accusation by the fact that the French were already in secret negotiations with the Nationalists and by the statements later made at Angora by M. Franklin Bouillon that the Nationalists had reason to appreciate the good will France had shown in Cilicia.

The Nationalist successes in the Caucasus and453 Cilicia occurred in March, 1921. One month earlier the Angora Government had sent a delegation to the London conference, authority of which was recognized by the Constantinople Turks, who joined their delegation with that of Angora, and acknowledged the Nationalist leader, Bekir Sami Bey, as head of the joint delegation. Little progress was made at the London Conference, as we have seen elsewhere, in the solution of the Near Eastern question. But Bekir Sami Bey concluded at London secret treaties with France and Italy. The Italian treaty gave Italy important economic concessions, and promised the withdrawal of Italian troops from Turkish territory, in return for Italian support to secure the restitution of Smyrna and Thrace to Turkey. The Angora assembly was not satisfied with the French treaty and refused to ratify it, pending the outcome of the military operations in Cilicia.

On March 16, 1921, the Nationalists concluded a treaty with Soviet Russia, according to which each contracting party pledged itself not to recognize any treaty or other agreement imposed upon the other party by force, and the Russians promised to ignore the Constantinople Government. On July 30 the Angora National Assembly ratified by 202 votes against 1 the treaty with the Bolshevists.

454 Angora’s relations with Moscow, and the humiliation inflicted upon her in Cilicia and by the refusal of Angora to ratify the treaty concluded in London, did not deter France from continuing to seek favors at Angora. M. Franklin Bouillon, who was president of the Foreign Relations Committee of the French Senate, made two visits to Angora in June and September. The second proved more fruitful than the first, for in the meantime the Greeks had won notable victories and had extended their occupation in Western Asia Minor. It is a sad commentary upon the fundamental heartlessness and cynicism of international politics that France, who profited greatly in Syria by the Greek victories of the summer of 1921, should have used the advantage they gave her to help her enemies against her ally.

On October 20, 1921, Mustafa Kemal Pasha and M. Franklin Bouillon signed a treaty, which was ratified by the French Government ten days later. The convention was elaborate. France not only gave back to the Nationalists Cilicia (which she had received from Great Britain) without any stipulation for the protection of the unfortunate Armenians to whom the French authorities in Cilicia had appealed three years earlier to help France against the Turks, but returned to Turkish rule a strip of northern Syria that had been included in the mandate entrusted455 to France by the League of Nations. The section of the Bagdad Railway up to the Tigris was restored to Turkey. In return for extensive and exclusive economic concessions and preferential commercial treatment, France agreed to make the same promise that Italy had made, i. e., to support the Angora Government in ousting Greece from Smyrna and Thrace. The news of the treaty, leaking out almost immediately, caused a great outcry against France in Great Britain. Parliament and press united in denouncing the French act as a blow to the Entente alliance, a disloyal and underhand proceeding, and the betrayal of France’s glorious and traditional rôle as protector of the Christians in the Levant.

The success of the Kemalists in 1921 had as great an effect at Constantinople as at Athens. At the beginning of the year Mustafa Kemal Pasha had officially notified the Constantinople Grand Vizir that the Angora Nationalist Government was the only government in Turkey, and that no measures passed or decrees issued in Constantinople would thereafter be considered as valid. This was a warning to all the world. Gradually during the year Angora increased in prestige among the Turks, and the Sultan’s authority diminished. Despite the unfavorable military situation of the Kemalists in Western Asia Minor, the great mass of the Turks in Constantinople456 believed that salvation would come to Angora. On November 1, 1921, the Angora Government declared itself constitutional, with the cabinet fully responsible to parliament. A commission was appointed to suggest modifications to the Constitution of 1908. Mustafa Kemal Pasha announced that when his Government returned to Constantinople the power of the Sultan would be strictly limited.

In 1922 Angora became the Mecca of concession-hunters, Bolshevist and anti-Bolshevist agitators, and European agents for the sale of war materials. Because of the refusal of France and Italy to tolerate a Greek blockade, the Kemalists were able to import all the supplies they could buy for cash or on credit. In the spring they began to use the same means they had employed against the Armenians to exterminate the several hundred thousand Greeks living in the Black Sea regions, mostly in the old kingdom of Pontus, whose medieval capital was Trebizond. News of the massacres and deportations was carefully concealed; for the Turks knew that the principal misgiving Entente diplomacy had in the matter of the restoration of Western Asia Minor to Turkish rule was the fear of massacres of Christians, which would perturb public opinion.

The Nationalists seemed to have become friends with all the world except the British. Lloyd457 George and Curzon were rightly suspected of secretly encouraging the Greeks and of hostility to the Kemalist movement. Nationalism always being akin to fanaticism, it was not surprising that anti-British feeling should become one of the cardinal points of Kemalism. The British seemed to stand between the Turks and their escape from the consequences of the World War, while the French and Italians were willing to let them off scot-free. The British also were the opponents of Nationalism throughout the Mohammedan world, in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Persia, and India. The attitude of the Nationalists toward Great Britain is illustrated by extracts from an article published in the spring of 1922 in the “Peyam Sabah,” an Angora newspaper, over the signature of one of Kemal Pasha’s leading satellites, Aka Goundouz:

One thing stands out definite, unshakable, eruptive like a volcano, stable and firm like the faith in God, infinite like time and darkness: hatred against the British.

The Mohammedan who really feels the need of purity of spirit in support of his religious convictions needs something else: hatred against the British.

It is the British who sow trouble and discord amongst you, O servants of Christ. You should therefore know that if the commandments of the Holy Spirit are ten in number, the eleventh should be hatred against the British.

There is a certain force which blows up civilization, kicks at virtue, and opposes humanity: it is England.

458 There is a typhoon which soaks with blood the cradles of the innocent, devastates the hearths, and causes foams of blood to cover lips that wish to smile: it is England.

And you, army of the Creator and Just One! Every time you massacre a Greek you are pulling down one of the corner-stones of the British Empire. So, for God’s sake, massacre. For the love of your country, massacre. O army of righteousness, on the day of your victory everybody will spit on the shameless face of the British.

In May and June the British press made much of reports of massacres, and the question of the responsibility of the Entente Powers was brought up in Parliament. Because the Kemalists had answered by blanket denials and by counter-charges against the Greeks, which were supported by the French and also by American concession-hunters, the British Government proposed a commission of investigation in which the United States was invited to participate. The commission was to visit the regions occupied by the Greeks as well as those over which the Kemalists held sway, and report to the Supreme Council. Secretary Hughes accepted the proposal. So did the Greek Government. But the Angora Government refused, on the ground that the commission would be made up of those who were technically still the enemies of Turkey. At the closing session of Parliament, on August 5, 1922, Lloyd George made a stirring speech against the claims of the Turkish Nationalists.

459 Then followed the attack against the Greek front at the end of August, the panic in the Greek army, and the sensational collapse of the Greeks. The victory was as easy for the Turks, virtually unopposed, as it was sudden and unexpected. Within a few weeks the Nationalists had overrun all the territories the Greeks had taken two years to conquer, and were marching on Constantinople. The Italians had already got out of Asia Minor. Paris wired orders to the commander of the French troops in Constantinople to withdraw to the European side of the Bosphorus. The British Government, however, decided that the armistice of Mudros must be respected until a new treaty was made to replace the Treaty of Sèvres. Reinforcements, naval and military, were hurried to the Dardanelles. General Harington was given full powers to prevent the violation of the armistice terms. Chanak, on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus, was hastily fortified. Lloyd George appealed to the British dominions for support and warned Mustapha Kemal Pasha that an overt act on the part of the Nationalists would mean war.

The French Government, alarmed at the turn events had taken, and urged by French holders of Turkish bonds not to allow the Kemalists to provoke the British, tried to persuade Lloyd George and Curzon to meet the Turks half-way. London460 answered that His Majesty’s Government was willing to recognize the new conditions created by the Turkish victories in Asia Minor and to agree to let the Turks have back Eastern Thrace after the new treaty was signed, but no concession could be made in regard to the Straits. Poincaré then sent Franklin Bouillon to convince Kemal Pasha of the folly of attacking the British; for by this action he would certainly lose all he had gained. After days of suspense during which the British held firm, the Turks agreed to meet the Entente Powers and the Greeks in an armistice conference at Mudania, on the Sea of Marmora.

The Turks wanted to reoccupy Constantinople and Thrace immediately. The British refused. After long discussion a compromise was made. The Greeks should evacuate Eastern Thrace; and Turkish gendarmes, with civilian functionaries, should be allowed to take over the administration of Thrace, pending the decision of the Peace Conference. The Nationalists might also send functionaries to Constantinople. But the Entente Powers should remain in control of the Straits, and the garrisons at Constantinople should not be withdrawn until after peace was signed. This was the situation when the delegates of the Entente Powers, the Little Entente, Greece, and Turkey—all of whom had signed the defunct461 Treaty of Sèvres—met at Lausanne on November 20, 1922, to try again to establish peace in the Near East.

The Turkish Nationalists had numerous friends in Europe and America ever since the beginning of the movement. It is not open to question that the Treaty of Sèvres was as bad a treaty as the other four treaties of the Paris peace settlement. It transferred Turks and other Moslems to the rule of their former subjects. It contained economic fetters and intolerable limitations of sovereignty. But there is no objection to the Treaty of Sèvres that would not hold with equal force in regard to the other treaties. In fact, its injustices were less, and the provocation for its punishments and guarantees for the future were as great as that which explained the Treaty of Versailles, if not greater. Morally or logically speaking, protagonists for the Turks have no more ground to stand upon than protagonists for the Germans.

The movement for the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres, which was begun before the treaty was signed, had its origin in the economic rivalry and the mutual suspicions of the victors. Had not this conflict of interests, which we attempt to explain in discussing the question of the Straits, became acute enough for Italy and France to decide to give encouragement and aid to the Turkish462 Nationalist movement, there need not have been a Lausanne Conference.

The sentimentalists, who see in Mustapha Kemal Pasha “the George Washington of his country,” had not studied the Young Turk movement of a decade ago and experienced its bitter disillusionment. The influences that are contributing to the success of Mustapha Kemal Pasha are as numerous and seemingly contradictory as those that brought to the fore Lenin and Mussolini. Because of the ignorance of the Anatolian Turks, their lack of knowledge and appreciation of Occidental political institutions, and their indifference or actual hostility to the economic and social impulses guiding and directing European and American life, the attempt to find an analogy between the Turks and ourselves in similar circumstances is futile.24

All we can safely do is to point out that the Kemalists are inexperienced in the art of governing and are military masters of the situation only in a defensive sense. They live in a country without roads and railways, into which, as the Greeks463 learned, penetration is costly and dangerous. The Nationalists seem to realize this advantage, and talk of making Angora the capital of New Turkey. Constantinople and Brusa, as recent events have proved, are so situated that any Turkish Government would be at the mercy of the Greeks, not to mention the great powers. Despite the threats at Mudania and Lausanne, the Kemalists were not in a position to break off the negotiations. Such a course would have again lost them Eastern Thrace. Lacking sea-power, they would not have been able to take the offensive against the Greeks in Europe. Even if they had succeeded in doing so, they would have had the Little Entente to reckon with. As potential foes, however, they worried the Entente Powers because of the uncertainty of the attitude of Russia and the apprehension of Mohammedan unrest in British, French, and Italian colonies.

The strength of the Turkish Nationalist movement has not been, as some people have imagined, in the invincible patriotism of the Turkish people, the leadership of the Mohammedan world, or the threat of Mustafa Kemal Pasha to band together the Turanian peoples of Western and Central Asia against European overlordship. Volumes have been written on each of these supposed sources of strength. None of them is convincing.

There are hardly more than 6,000,000 Turks,464 scattered over a vast territory and living under primitive conditions. That they know what patriotism is in our Occidental connotation of that term is impossible. The educated younger generation of Turks are patriots, and sincerely love and believe in their country. But they are a handful. Caught between the older generation of the upper class, which is still Hamidian in spirit and methods, and the apathetic and ignorant Anatolian peasantry, there is something pathetic about the enthusiasm and incredible credulity of earnest and highminded young people of both sexes.

The Turkish Nationalist movement, like most nationalist movements, is anti-clerical. The Angora Turks have gone as far as they dared, in view of the advantages of religious fanaticism in their internal policy and of Mohammedan solidarity in their foreign policy, to put the worship of race and country in the place of the worship of God through the intermediary of the Mohammedan faith and practice. The decree of the National Assembly on November 1, 1922, terminating the temporal power of the House of Osman, and assuming the right of the Angora Assembly to elect a new Khalif for the Mohammedan world, illustrates how the Nationalists regard their internal interests and the triumph of their party as transcending religious considerations and the sentiments of the Mohammedan world. The assumption465 that “the Turkish Government will be the principal rampart of the Khalifate” (to quote the decree) is a revelation of the state of mind of the Nationalist leaders, obsessed by the idea that a few million Turks, having destroyed the historic Sultanate, could expect to dominate Islam and to capitalize it for their particular interests. The Sultan fled from Constantinople to Malta on a British warship, and later proceeded to Mecca, where he was received as Khalif by the Arabs. He has not abdicated and refuses to recognize the validity of the Angora Assembly’s decree abolishing the temporal power of the House of Osman and removing him from his position as spiritual head of those who profess the orthodox Mohammedan faith.

There have been surface indications, however, of a seeming Mohammedan solidarity, which have deceived the casual newspaper reader and have undoubtedly powerfully helped the Turkish Nationalist cause. A sacred flag of Islam was sent by the Turks to the Mohammedans of India in February, 1923, when the first Lausanne Conference broke up. It was used as a symbol in processions in Bombay and other cities, which ended in mass meetings of Mohammedans in which sympathy and support for Turkey were voted. Along with these demonstrations there has been a recruiting movement in Northern India, which has466 been supplying the Turks with Indian and Afghan volunteers. Assurances have been given that Angora can rely on 200,000 trained volunteers and an insurrectionary movement in India as well, should war come as a result of the failure of the Lausanne Conference.

These indications must be interpreted as moves in the Nationalist trouble against the British in India, and not as a recognition of the importance of the Turks in the Mohammedan world. The whole Turkish race in Asia Minor numbers less than one-tenth of the Moslems of India! While the Indian Moslems are backing the Turks they are also interested in gauging the strength of Arabic opposition to Great Britain, and have accepted the Arabic determination to remain from now on free from Turkish domination. Angora was ignored at the April Lucknow Conference, on the question of the administration of Mohammedan Holy Lands and regulations for the Mecca pilgrimage. There was no reference to Constantinople or Angora, and it was decided to send a deputation to the rulers of Hedjaz and Irak, for the purpose of anti-British agitation.

If it is difficult to see how the Turkish Nationalist movement is going to control the Mohammedan world, it is still more difficult to accept the idea that there is such a movement as pan-Turanianism, of which the Nationalists make so much.467 In the days of its glory, the Ottoman Empire included the Caucasus and the entire coast of the Black Sea. The Ottoman Turks were masters of a part of the Turanian race and neighbors of the Turanians of Central Asia. During the latter part of the World War, and for a brief moment in the early part of 1921, the Ottoman Turks partly restored the old contacts. But these were broken again by the Bolshevists, who have proved themselves in Asia tenacious inheritors of traditional Russian foreign policy. Half a century ago the Ottoman Turks lost to Russia the last of the Turanian regions in the Caucasus. In 1921 they were compelled again to relinquish the dream of leading the Turanians. The Ottoman Turks are incapable of coping with the Russians, whatever form of government Russia may have. A pan-Turanian movement, deriving its inspiration from Turkey and giving power to Turkey, does not need to be reckoned with as a probability in world politics.

The strength of the Turkish Nationalists is in the geographical position of their country, from the outlet of the Black Sea to the sources of the Mesopotamian rivers, where Russia and Great Britain fear they will some day meet in a struggle for the control of India, and from which France, Italy, and Germany are determined not to be excluded.468 If we realize this, we shall see that governmental backing of oil, mining, railway, and port concessions have a political as well as a commercial motive. Fear is the incentive to greed. The success that has attended the Turkish Nationalist movement is due to the recognition of this fact by Mustafa Kemal Pasha and his associates; their own political future—and the importance of the New Turkey—will depend upon their ability to make good use of it.

469

Shortly before the debacle of the Greek army in Asia Minor I was discussing the question of war weariness with English friends at luncheon in a London club. Aware that good fortune had thrown me with men who knew—if any did—the state of the public mind in Great Britain, I was trying to find out whether the British would be ready to back by force of arms the French reparations demands upon Germany. My informants were unanimous in the belief that no Government could lead the English people into a new war. “Not a chance in the world, any more than there is in your country,” declared a Foreign Office man. “We know that so well that we got out of Ireland, compromised with Egypt, put up with a makeshift in Mesopotamia, stalled on the Zionist business in Palestine, and are constantly warning the Government of India to avoid trouble internally and with Afghanistan.”

“You mean that the people are not behind you in support of traditional policies abroad, unless470 you can work them into feeling that pride and honor are involved.”

“As for pride, we’d swallow a lot before we would allow the income tax to go higher, and that honor business depends upon the press. Well, our press is as pacifist now as it was jingo a few years ago. We are not in a fire-eating mood. I do not think of any problem in international politics that could involve our people in war.”

“How about the Straits?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, the Straits; that’s different,” admitted my friend. “We should have to fight for the freedom of the Straits. No alternative there if the Greeks should lose out and the Turks push us.”

“Having been incited to push you,” I commented.

“Having been incited to push us,” he repeated gravely. And the others bowed assent.

This took me back to the previous week in Paris, when I had twice secured modifications of sweeping statements from men in the highest position by the same simple question. When one statesman told me that France would never extend the hand of fellowship to the Bolsheviki, I asked, “How about the Straits?” And when another statesman declared that France and Great Britain must and would see eye to eye in perfect solidarity “for the sake of the future of civilization,”471 I asked, “How about the Straits?” In both instances there was the admission that making up with Lenin and destroying the Entente were lesser evils to France than seeing the English, either openly or indirectly through Greece as a tool, installed at Constantinople, and, ergo, in control of the Straits.

Without going into history further than the Conference of San Remo in the spring of 1920, we see that the determination of France to oust Great Britain from Constantinople and of Italy to prevent Greece from profiting by her intervention in the World War has made strange political bedfellows, has split the Entente alliance, has given Russia her chance to get back into the councils of the great powers, has made possible the repetition of massacres of Christians by the Turks, has jeopardized the advantages granted in the Treaty of Sèvres to the Entente Powers as well as to Greece, and has created the dangerous precedent and example in allowing one of the enemy states, to whom a victors’ treaty had been dictated, to tear up the treaty and turn the tables by dictating a new treaty to the erstwhile victors.

It is not too much to say that the quarrel among the Entente Powers over the disposition of the Straits has ended in robbing them of virtually all the spoils of their victory over the Central Empires, in damaging their prestige, and in undermining472 still further their authority in the Mohammedan world, already seriously impaired during the World War and the Peace Conference. The Conference of San Remo came to an agreement that saved the Entente from dissolution. But the failure of the three contracting parties—Great Britain, France, and Italy—to live up to the agreement and to enforce the Treaty of Sèvres revealed a house divided against itself and demonstrated the fact that treaties imposed upon the vanquished by force would be upset the moment the force was dissipated. When the Entente generals met the representatives of Kemal Pasha at Mudania, they were confronted with demands the acceptance of which meant the first step in the inevitable surrender of all that had been gained by the World War. It was an hour of supreme danger when Ismet Pasha demanded the surrender of Constantinople before the terms of a new peace settlement in the Near East had been arranged. And yet France dared to support this demand, which Great Britain and Italy opposed, risking everything on playing the card that would get the British out of Constantinople.

Why did the triumph of their respective points of view in regard to the Straits seem of such vital importance to the British and French statesmen that they were willing to sacrifice friendship, alliance, and the war aims in the defense and furtherance473 of which they fought to a glorious and successful end the most stupendous and costly war of history? Both nations professed to be defending “the freedom of the Straits” and to be working to avert “a more horrible war than we have yet known,” as Lloyd George put it. But they acted toward one another more like enemies than friends, and their premiers, with the support of Cabinets and the press, advanced diametrically opposite opinions as to the best way to prevent the war they dreaded.

If the sorry mess in the Near East is settled without war, we shall be told that a dreadful calamity has only been postponed; and for this doubtful victory France will have paid the price of loss of British support in wringing money out of Germany. If it leads to war, Great Britain fears the entry of Soviet Russia against her and uprisings in her Mohammedan possessions.

The Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, so narrow that you can shoot an ordinary rifle from one continent to the other, so winding that cannon can rake a ship fore and aft as well as shell broadside at many places, afford the only outlet to the outside world for Bulgaria, Rumania, southern Russia, the Caucasus republics, and some of the largest and richest vilayets of Turkey. For all Russia these waterways are the sole ice-free passage. They are the nearest and most practicable474 outlet for northern Persia and the khanates of central Asia. A considerable portion of the wheat supply of many European countries comes in normal times from southern Russia, while Europe learned to count upon the regular appearance on the market of the vast petroleum output of the Baku region of the Caucasus. The major portion of the trade of a region inhabited by one and a half times the population of the United States is carried through Black Sea ports. So important to the world’s well-being was the free passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean considered before the World War that Italy and the Balkan States, in their wars with Turkey, had to yield to the remonstrances of other nations and forego the advantage of bringing pressure to bear upon Turkey by attacking and blockading the Straits.

Although during the nineteenth century the danger to the British Empire of the control of the Straits by an enemy power in time of war was never given a practical demonstration, it was vividly enough imagined for the British to have fought once (the Crimean War) and to have been ready to fight on two other occasions (Treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi, 1833, and Treaty of San Stefano, 1878) to prevent Russia from dominating the Straits.

A practical demonstration of this danger was475 given during the recent World War. The disastrous effects to the Entente Powers of Turkey’s alliance with their enemies, which closed the Straits for four precious years, have not yet been fully measured. By handing over to Germany the control of the Straits the Turks are directly responsible for (1) the length of the war, (2) the collapse of Russia, (3) the year of grace during which the Bolshevist régime got itself thoroughly established in Russia, (4) the menace to the Suez Canal during the war, and (5) the unchecked spread of anti-British propaganda in northwest India, Afghanistan, Persia, Arabia, and Egypt. The Dardanelles expedition, which was a holocaust for Australians and New Zealanders as well as British, was entered upon and persisted in because the British Government realized that the Straits ought to be forced, if possible, regardless of cost, for the sake of vital imperial interests. Using Turkey and the Holy War, Germany was in a fair way to cut England’s communications with India, the Far East, and Australasia. In 1916 the British were saved by their success in fomenting a rebellion of Mecca against Constantinople, which was possible because of the tactlessness of the Turks toward the Arabs and the cruel repressions of Djemal Pasha in Damascus and Beirut. In 1917 they were saved by the entry of the United States into the war. American credits476 and supplies, the moral effect of America’s entry, and the American contribution to the Entente armies on the western front in the spring and early summer of 1918 alone made possible the retention of the British armies in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Macedonia. But to the wise man a menace successfully confronted is not a menace forgotten. The Islamic belt stretches around the Black Sea, across the Dardanelles and Bosphorus, and across the Suez Canal. The British Empire is defended by the British fleet. If the fleet is powerless to exercise pressure upon the enemies of the Empire in the interests and defense of the Empire, the Empire will crumble to pieces in short order.

Breathing a sigh of relief when the armistice was signed, the British Foreign Office, aware of the vital importance of the Black Sea region to the future of British rule in Asia, sent troops not only to Constantinople but also to the Caucasus and northern Persia. Pressure was once more brought to bear upon Afghanistan; and, despite interpellations in Parliament on the ground of expense, the Mesopotamian army was reinforced and extended its occupation northward and eastward. The powerful sympathies of international Jewry were enlisted to create a buffer region on the Asiatic side of the Suez Canal.

Gradually, however, it was realized that tax477 weariness and war weariness at home must be reckoned with. This meant abandonment of the Caucasus, Persia, and Afghanistan to the undisputed influence of Soviet Russia, whose propaganda it was planned to call off by trade agreements and the lifting of the economic blockade. The Mohammedan world, not being interested in trade and not being vitally vulnerable to any form of economic or food blockade, could best be watched and intimidated by a British fleet at Constantinople, holding Stambul and the Sultan’s palace of Dolmabagché under its guns, and able to cruise at will in the Black Sea. As the tax-payers accept the burden of maintaining the fleet without complaint, the freedom enjoyed in the Straits since 1918 has been a boon to the British Government in exercising pressure without spending too much money!

The Treaty of Sèvres is a splendid illustration of the vicious methods of world politics, which make agreements between nations unsound and insincere: unsound because they are not arrived at after a fair consideration of the issues at stake and because they represent makeshift compromises; insincere because the contracting parties do not intend to keep them if contingent agreements—or rather bargains—are not lived up to. The British point of view prevailed in the Treaty of Sèvres. But Italy expected to gain from this478 concession British support against the Jugoslavs in the Adriatic, and France expected British support for extreme measures against Germany in the reparations collection. Both nations looked to Great Britain either to forgive or forget their indebtedness to her or at least to grant them the priority already acknowledged to Belgium in reparations payments.

Before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Sèvres, France and Italy realized that the British could not be depended upon to help them out of their troubles, political or financial; and the return of Constantine gave an excellent excuse to two of the three makers of the treaty not only to consider it null and void but actually to work against it. We must not lay too much stress upon the concessions featured in the secret treaties negotiated by Italy and France with the Angora Government. Considerations of foreign policy were paramount. Italy plotted the ruin of a potential commercial competitor in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea. France was bent on destroying the country she believed Great Britain had picked to hold Constantinople and the Straits as agent for British political and commercial interests. The Nationalist Turks had the luck to be a good weapon to be used by two members of the Entente alliance to strike the third; and the Greeks had the misfortune to be lacking in endurance to play479 through to the end of the game the British expected them to play alone, for the British Government was not prepared to risk Mohammedan difficulties by coming out openly on the side of the Greeks.

Great Britain did not feel uneasy about the Turks on the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus until after the Young Turk revolution. The new régime had not been long installed before foreign observers began to see that the Young Turks were smitten with megalomania. They had an inordinate confidence in their own strength and in their ability to impose their cultural and political hegemony, in a constitutional state, upon the non-Turkish elements, Moslem as well as Christian. Abdul Hamid and his predecessors had been past masters in the art of knowing how far to go in pitting one European Power against another, in collecting taxes from Christians and oppressing them, and in extending administrative control over non-Turkish Moslems and conscripting for the army among them. The Young Turks provoked Albanians and Arabs to rebellion, alienated Circassians and Kurds, and goaded the Balkan States to the point of desperation where they were able to forget their own rivalries long enough to combine and drive the Turks out of Macedonia and Thrace. How could a British Liberal Government, relying upon the Nonconformist vote,480 continue to aid the Turks in maintaining their domination over subject peoples who had proved their ability to free themselves? After the first year of enthusiasm and generous impulse ended in the horrible Adana massacre, the Young Turks were thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the electors to whom Messrs. Asquith and Lloyd George had to appeal in two bitterly contested General Elections.

Turkey was weakened both by fruitless efforts to put down the rebellions among Mohammedan subject peoples that her new masters foolishly provoked and by the Young Turk policies in Tripoli and Macedonia, which were heading directly toward wars that could end only disastrously. Her leaders looked to Europe for some powerful ally. Abandoning Abdul Hamid’s safe policy of pitting one against another, the Young Turks deliberately chose Germany as their friend, put their army and the control of the Straits in Germany’s hands a year before the World War broke out, and during the months of August and September, 1914, so critical to the Entente Powers, deceived the British and French by protestations of friendship and neutrality. But as soon as the engineer officers of their German allies advised them that the Dardanelles could not be forced by a fleet, they threw in their lot with the Central Powers. During the years since the armistice the Turks have481 been in close touch with Soviet Russia and have assisted materially in the anti-British propaganda of the Bolshevists in Asia.

The difference between the Young Turks and the Old Turks is that the régime since 1908 purports to represent a people conscious of its nationhood and power, while the Hamidian régime was a system that had existed for centuries upon the threefold foundation: a theocratic absolutist Government, centralized at Constantinople, for the Turkish element and other Mohammedan elements near the sea or in lowlands; virtual autonomy, on the principle of non-intervention or laisser-faire, for non-Turkish Mohammedan peoples of the mountains or hinterland; and separate communities under their hierarchies for the Christian peoples of the empire. Old Turkey could be the enemy of no country except one that invaded her, and during the nineteenth century intervention of other powers was always invoked against an aggressor power. Abdul Hamid’s pan-Islamic movement was a political one, with a limited appeal. The autocrat did not allow it to get out of hand through the awakening of a national consciousness. Until 1908 it never occurred to the British that Turkey was a country that might at any time, without provocation upon the part of Great Britain, join the enemies of the British Empire in time of war, close the Straits, and proclaim482 a Holy War against the greatest Mohammedan power in the world (for the British Empire is that). But since 1908 Great Britain has had to reckon with Turkey as a potential enemy, and, since 1914, as an actual enemy. As a military menace the Turks are negligible to the British. But the Turks handing the key to the Straits to an enemy of Great Britain in time of war—that has happened once, and the British know that if it is allowed to happen again the death-knell of the British Empire may sound.

The freedom of the Straits, from the British point of view, means the insertion of guarantees in the peace settlement in the Near East of such a nature that a repetition of 1914 will be impossible. The Straits must be open to British warships in time of war as in time of peace, open in such a way that nothing can close them. It is unnecessary to make any provisions concerning merchant ships. The British undertake to have a fleet large enough to look out for their merchant marine in war and peace!

What are these guarantees? First of all, prohibition of any form of fortification along the Straits or in the Sea of Marmora. Second, a neutral zone, whose inviolability will be under the vigilant control of an international commission on both sides of the Dardanelles and Bosphorus. Third, the absence of armies and armaments in483 the neutral zone. When Mr. Lloyd George declared that never again should the Straits be closed against the British, his political opponents (except the Labor men) agreed that the French needed to be told bluntly that the Straits guarantees meant as much to the British as the Rhine guarantees meant to the French, and that it was a case of quid pro quo. Great Britain’s future policy toward German guarantees was going to be contingent upon France’s policy toward Turkish guarantees.

The British warning to France was heeded by Premier Poincaré. When Lord Curzon called at the Quai d’Orsay on October 6, he was informed that instructions had been sent to Constantinople for the French to agree with General Harington in rejecting the Kemalist demand that Eastern Thrace be turned over to Turkey immediately. But the attitude of M. Franklin Bouillon, negotiator of the Angora Treaty, at the Mudania conference the previous day showed that what France really wanted was the return of Constantinople and Eastern Thrace to the Nationalist Turks without serious or effective guarantees.

The French have a clarity of vision that Teutons and Anglo-Saxons do not possess. If they seem more selfish and cynical and hard-hearted than ourselves it is only because they do not possess our comfortable faculty of deceiving ourselves484 into believing that motives are mostly actuated by altruism rather than self-interest. The intellectual honesty of the French people shocks us when they apply it to their own actions, for we have never learned how to be honest with ourselves. To the Anglo-Saxon mind naked motives are like nude women; we know there are such things but our modesty clothes them!

The French look at the freedom of the Straits as something akin to the freedom of the seas. It is a comfortable formula without any meaning. For is not freedom that which one enjoys through the exercise of superior strength? And is it possible to enjoy freedom without denying it to others? The seas are free to the British, and the affirmation of this freedom for themselves is the negation of it to others. The British (I am still presenting the French point of view) would think that they had lost the freedom of the seas unless they were able to go where they pleased and do what their interests dictated in time of war. Now for the Straits. Although Italy is wholly and France partly and Great Britain not at all a Mediterranean power, the one of the three possessing no littoral in the Mediterranean controls both entrances to it. The French and Italians have never heard the British advocating the dismantling of Gibraltar and the application to the Suez Canal of the Sèvres Treaty provisions for the Dardanelles485 and Bosphorus. From the point of view of her allies, what does Great Britain mean by the freedom of the Straits? They believe that she conspired with the Greeks to close the Straits, which necessitated drastic counter-moves. And now that these counter-moves have succeeded, why all this great fuss over neutral zones? At the bottom of it (au fond, as the French love to say in summarizing the discussion of a problem or an argument), what the British want is immunity for their fleet from the inconveniences created by nature to free movement in and out of the Black Sea. Once this immunity is granted them, they will be in a position, owing to their naval superiority, to make it valueless to any other nation. By the treaty negotiated at Washington, France and Italy were asked to agree to a naval ratio of 1.75 to 1.75 in proportion to Britain’s 5. Together they are asked to accept 3.5 to Britain’s 5. As long as this naval proportion holds by treaty, the freedom of the Straits is valuable only for Great Britain and the United States.

Let us take a concrete illustration. Let us say that the treaty settlement does have guarantees that are effective, that the neutral zone is established and controlled, and that the Bosphorus and Dardanelles are without fortifications. The British fleet is able to pass at will from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and vice versa. Its486 cruising-radius, and hence its power, is extended to the vast Black Sea regions. But does that freedom work out in the same way for Russia and France and Italy? The Straits are free, yes, but the mistress of the seas, for that very reason, would be able to attack the Russians in their own waters, and then, backed up against the “free” Straits, oppose at either end to any comer (except the United States, who is not interested in that part of the world) a floating barrier of fortifications more powerful than any that ever could be erected at the mouth of the Bosphorus on the Black Sea or the mouth of the Dardanelles on the Ægean Sea. Again, in case of war, if the Straits are free, only the British merchant marine could pass freely in and out of the Black Sea.

One objects that we must consider the good faith of England; and the Anglophile declares that England never abuses her power and that her word is as good as her bond. Yes, that is a powerful argument for us Americans, now that we have our 5 to 5 ratio. It was a powerful argument before, because we were neither trade nor political rivals of our cousins across the sea. But we must get it into our heads that the French and Italians and Russians do not look upon the British as most of us do. The British are a potential enemy. History has demonstrated that nations change alliances bewilderingly. The foreign487 policy of France (and of Italy) in the Near East always takes into consideration the superiority of the British fleet and the possession by Great Britain of Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, and Malta. Whatever steps can be taken to lessen the menace of British sea-power, or, at least, to prevent its becoming a greater menace, are justifiable and worth risking much. As they do not believe Bolshevism will last for ever, French and Italians look upon Russian influence dominating Constantinople as less of a danger in war and far, far less of a stumbling-block to commerce in peace than British control there.

Since Italy has got over her fear of an internal Bolshevist movement, and since France has become convinced that Poland will never replace her old Muscovite ally as the “guardian of civilization against German barbarism” on the eastern marches, there has been a marked tendency in Rome and Paris to talk about the obligations of the Entente secret treaty of 1915. The French, especially, are apprehensive of the moment when a regenerated but thoroughly nationalistic Russia, upon whom France will be able to depend far more than upon Great Britain and the United States for aid against a German recovery, will ask how her friends looked after her interests abroad during the years of misfortune and humiliation. They want to be able to say that they488 had prevented Great Britain from corralling Constantinople. In Greek hands it might not have been possible to consider Constantinople as a tempting morsel to bait the imperialistic ambitions of convalescent Russia. With an international neutral zone established and the freedom of the Straits guaranteed, the new Russia (although realizing even more bitterly than the two Mediterranean powers the exclusive advantage of this régime to Great Britain) would have her hands tied and would owe nothing but resentment to France. With the Turks back on both sides of the Straits, France can make a secret treaty with Russia by which Turkey will follow Greece as a sacrifice to the exigencies, to the superior interests, of European powers. Why not? France has much less reason to regard Turkey than Greece with a feeling of affection or obligation. Greece was trussed and delivered up as a victim to Kemal Pasha. If ever betrayal of the Turks is the price of winning back Russia in an offensive and defensive alliance against Germany, who would be foolish enough to protest on the score of honor?

I hold no brief for British or French, for Italian or Russian, for Turk or Greek. I have tried not to wander into by-paths but to present here the facts concerning the Straits. It is true that these facts present a sorry picture of international489 morality. But is it not important for us to analyze the motives actuating the principals in this stupendous diplomatic battle? For only in this way shall we come to understand how futile would be the solution proposed so glibly, i. e., that the League of Nations control the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. For, from the world point of view, there is no separate problem called the Question of the Straits, unless we decapitalize Straits, and cut out the definite article. There is a question of straits, by which we mean all international waterways. The League of Nations can rightly be suspected of being an agent of particular interests, plotting in the interests of some nations against other, until its champions are able to convince themselves and public opinion in the nations whose representatives sit on the League Council that the League can exist and function only as an instrument of impartial administration and justice.

If the United States is willing to give up the Panama Canal to the League, and Great Britain is willing to give up Gibraltar and the Suez Canal to the League, we have the right to criticize French and Italian policy on the Bosphorus, on the ground that these powers have less faith in the League than ourselves! But by what right do we expect these two powers to entrust their interests in the Eastern Mediterranean and the490 Black Sea to the League of Nations when we neither have given the example nor will promise to follow it? And what can we possibly find to say to Russia or Turkey, the countries most interested?

491

The conference agreed upon at the time of the signing of the Mudania armistice opened at Lausanne on November 20, 1922. The Turks had been defeated in the World War. Their capital was still occupied by Entente soldiers and sailors. Within a decade the Ottoman Empire had suffered the most crushing humiliations on the field of battle in all its long history, followed by the loss of more than half its territory. Italy had taken Tripoli; the Balkan States had divided up the European provinces; Italy and Greece were in possession of the Ægean islands, including Rhodes and Crete; France held Syria; and Great Britain was organizing a new political status for Palestine, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egypt, and Cyprus. The Sublime Porte had gone out of business, and the House of Osman had ceased to rule over what was left of Turkey. And yet the Turks came to Lausanne, inspired by their easy victory over the Greeks, to negotiate a treaty to take the place of the Treaty of Sèvres, which had been dictated to them as a conquered nation two492 years earlier by the victors of the World War.

Why the Treaty of Sèvres was going to be revised and how the Turks were able to demand a new treaty on the footing of equality we have already shown. We have pointed out, too, certain reasons, in connection with the problems of the Near East, that explain the failure of the Entente to enforce the peace settlement with Turkey in the same way that it was trying to enforce the other treaties of the Paris settlement.

The attitude of the Turkish Nationalist during the Mudania armistice negotiations and the six weeks that intervened until the peace conference opened was significant. It should have been a warning to Entente statesmen that they would never be able to make peace in the Near East, much less arrive at some practicable solution of the problems, unless they succeeded in getting together, and unless they were determined to lay down a common program of peace, rather than abandon which they would coerce Turkey. The Turks came to Lausanne assuming that the expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor and the reoccupation of Eastern Thrace put them in the position of victors, whose appeal to force to escape the consequences of their coöperation with Germany had been successful. They brought with them a mandate from the Angora Assembly to make a new treaty in conformity with the six493 articles of the National Pact of 1920. In the discussions with the Entente delegates and the American “unofficial observers” they referred constantly to this Pact and declared that they had no authority to accept any clauses in a new treaty contrary to the stipulations of the Pact.

No arguments or pleas could move them. Every modification of the original proposals of the Entente Powers was accepted as a matter of course. The Turkish delegates were pleased to observe, whenever the Entente delegates yielded a point, that the principles of the National Pact were being at last recognized.

The first test of the conference came on December 1, when Ismet Pasha, questioned about the reports from Asia Minor of an exodus of Christian minorities, admitted that these unfortunates had been given one month to quit the country. If they were dying on the roads from hunger or cold, it was because they were “unnecessarily panicky”; and if horrible conditions existed in Black Sea ports, it was because the Greek Government had not sent ships enough to transport the refugees. Venizelos, who was representing Greece, replied that it was a physical impossibility for Greece either to transport hundreds of thousands or take care of them on Greek soil. Greece had already some six hundred thousand refugees on her hands.494 Then Ismet Pasha proposed an exchange of Christians and Mohammedans between Turkey and the Balkan States. Had not Venizelos himself offered this solution to the Bulgarians at Bucharest when the Macedonian boundary-line was being fixed?

Lord Curzon spoke strongly in behalf of the Christians. He pointed out that the Turks had already done away with more than one million, that the Greeks of the interior of Asia Minor and the Black Sea coast could not suddenly find means of livelihood in a new country, that crossing the mountains in winter meant freezing to death, and that public opinion in Great Britain would react unfavorably to the deportation. The French and Italian delegates made no comment. Ismet Pasha calmly replied that the security of Turkey demanded the expulsion of revolutionary elements, that the country might have a homogeneous population. The new policy was a sane one, and the Turks would not yield their right to make their country secure. Had not Greece invoked the presence of a Christian population as her excuse for invading Turkey and attempting to detach the richest territories of the Turkish fatherland? A durable peace could not come until that temptation was removed! Ismet Pasha was naturally sorry for the sufferings of the Christians, but they had brought this measure495 upon their own heads by conspiring against Turkey. He was, however, willing to telegraph Angora recommending that a fortnight longer be given the remaining Christians to get out.

The protection of Christian minorities, which the European Powers had made a diplomatic issue with Turkey for a hundred years, was the first point yielded. Immediately the Turks announced that the Greek Patriarchate would have to be removed from Constantinople, and that probably measures would be adopted to expel the 400,000 Greeks and Armenians of the capital. Would not this be the best way to settle the minorities question?

When the various commissions of the conference got down to business and began to draft the clauses of the treaty, Entente experts discovered that the Turks refused point-blank to accept anything which, in their opinion, would imply a limitation upon Turkish sovereignty. Ismet Pasha and the other delegates proceeded on three assumptions: (1) Turkey has a right to equality; (2) Turkey is capable of ruling without limitations of any sort and of handling her own affairs; (3) Turkey has the force to resist any treaty stipulation, territorial or economic, that violates the terms of the National Pact. The National Assembly had instructed its delegates to proceed with the negotiations on the ground of non-recognition496 of past treaties and agreements and on the assumption that the status of regions of the Ottoman Empire occupied during the World War and held by British and French armies was still open to discussion. The gist of the Turkish contention was that the Angora Government inherited all the privileges and none of the obligations of the Ottoman Empire.

The striking of this snag, which affected vitally the political balance of power in the Near East and the economic interests of the Entente Powers, caused the conference to waste weeks in futile discussion. A recess was taken for Christmas, in the hope that the Turks might be willing to compromise. The Entente experts went ahead with the work of drafting the treaty. But on January 3, 1923, Reouf Bey, Chief of Commissars of the Angora Government, told the National Assembly that the full powers of the Turkish delegation at Lausanne had been given to conclude peace, but with the following reservations:

(1) Karagach is inseparable from Adrianople.

(2) A plebiscite is demanded for Western Thrace.

(3) Turkey cannot recognize any Armenian State outside the Armenian Republic in the Caucasus, whose capital is Erivan.

(4) Before conceding freedom of the Straits, Turkey must obtain full guarantees in regard to the security of the Sea of Marmora and Constantinople.

497 (5) Turkey refuses to accept any foreign control on Turkish territory.

(6) Mosul is within the limits of Turkey as outlined in the National Pact, because the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants are the sons of Turkey.

(7) If Turkey cannot obtain a war indemnity or reparations at Lausanne, she must be allowed to settle this matter with the Greeks alone.

(8) In the question of the capitulations, Turkey will remain true to the National Pact, by which they are abrogated.

(9) Yemen is a part of our country, and the Hedjaz Railway is the property of the Evkaf (Religious Foundations).

The British and French could not for a time believe that the Turks were in earnest. It was preposterous to suppose that the British would give up the Mosul region, rich in oil, which had been the underlying motive of the stupendous sacrifices they made to conquer and hold Mesopotamia. The Yemen is a province of Arabia, and the claim to it and to a proprietary right in the Hedjaz Railway was a challenge to the British and French mandates. A plebiscite for Western Thrace and Turkish claims for indemnity against Greece might easily lead to a new Balkan war, with unlimited possibilities; for the Little Entente was already showing itself restless over the failure of the Big Entente delegates to maintain the attitude they had adopted at Mudania,498 where a strict limitation of the forces Turkey was to be allowed in Thrace had been insisted upon. The most alarming of all the claims of the Turks was their assertion of the right to abrogate the capitulations.

The Mosul oil question seemed to be the primary cause for the break. But that was a difference between Turkey and Great Britain alone, and was not as serious as it appeared on the surface. The British were in possession of Mosul. Having possession, they enjoyed the diplomatic advantage; there was little for Turkey to do but accept the postponement of the decision on this question or its reference to arbitration. The capitulations, on the other hand, brought out a fundamental disagreement, in which all the parties to the conference, including the Americans, were involved.

Mustafa Kemal Pasha telegraphed to Lausanne a statement calculated to appeal to public opinion, in which he referred directly to Mosul, but with the intention of linking Mosul with the capitulations in the perfidious chain he accused the Entente Powers of foregoing in the Treaty of Lausanne to keep Turkey under European exploitation. He said in part:

It is evident that enslavement of a people in order to appropriate the natural resources of their country is contrary, not only to the spirit of the century, but also to the499 most elementary principles of humanity. We think the oil riches of Mosul, which, moreover, are within the frontiers defined by our National Pact, ought to be exploited freely for the common benefit of that region’s population and all humanity without monopoly of any sort.

There is no doubt of the force of the Turkish appeal against the capitulatory régime and the limitations upon sovereignty established by former concessions. Liberal public opinion has long felt that Turkey, like China and other non-European countries, was a victim of European imperialism. Had it not been for the bloody history of massacres, in which the Kemalists shared, the stand of the Turkish delegation at Lausanne would have met with sympathy and wide support in the British and American press. The capitulations, the Turks asserted, were unjust and a source of weakness, making the rehabilitation of Turkey impossible. How could the new constitutional Government develop a strong and progressive national life so long as foreign business houses and foreigners individually enjoyed extra-territorial privileges and immunity from taxation? Why should the Europeans and Americans possess in Turkey privileges that they would never dream of granting Turks in their countries? At Lausanne Ismet Pasha maintained that territorial questions and problems arising from the pre-war debts could be settled500 by compromise or arbitration. The minorities question was solving itself. But New Turkey could sign no treaty containing a reaffirmation, under another form, of the humiliating capitulatory principle.

For a month after the Franco-Belgian invasion of the Ruhr had come to complicate the international political situation, the Lausanne Conference continued to debate the question of the future relations of Turkey with business concerns, educational institutions, and individuals of European and American origin in Turkey. On February 7, 1923, Ismet Pasha and the principal members of the Turkish delegation left for Angora. This was the Turkish answer to a warning against renewed haggling that had been put in the form of an ultimatum to the Turks. Lord Curzon testily said:

I hope that Ismet Pasha will not imagine that we are willing to commence the whole procedure over again, and that by further haggling and chaffering he will succeed in upsetting the work of the past three months, and starting a new conference either here or at some other spot. In such a conference I at least could take no part. We are not buying or selling a carpet in an Oriental bazaar, but are dealing with the destinies of nations and the lives of men.

Ambassador Child had urged Ismet Pasha to sign the treaty, and Lord Curzon waited, at great501 loss of personal dignity, in the hope that the Turks would give in. The Turks did not give in. Ismet Pasha did not take the trouble to say good-by to Lord Curzon. On the day the delegates left Lausanne the French Foreign Office received an alarming report from its consul at Smyrna, begging for war-ships and stating that the evacuation of French subjects was imperative. France acceded to the request and joined Great Britain in sending more troops and war-ships to the Dardanelles and Constantinople.

Mustafa Kemal Pasha retaliated by giving the powers twenty-four hours to withdraw their war-ships from Smyrna Harbor and declaring that in the future no armed vessel of more than a thousand tons could enter Turkish ports. The ultimatum was ignored. The Entente Powers remained at Smyrna; and during the late winter and spring they refused numerous requests to get out of Constantinople, although they did agree to turn over the administration of the city to representatives of the Angora Government. Without waiting for a treaty, the Turks at Constantinople and elsewhere began to enforce the observance of Turkish laws by foreign business houses, educational institutions, missionary enterprises, and individuals. The United States joined the Entente and neutral Powers in protests, which were unheeded.

502 In the meantime negotiations concerning the treaty had been carried on by notes exchanged between Angora and the Entente chancelleries. They led to no result. In the hope of arriving at some agreement and putting an end to an intolerable situation, which might at any moment lead to a new war in the Near East, the Entente Powers decided to renew the Lausanne Conference, which met again at the end of April.

The conference resumed its sessions at Lausanne on April 22 in an atmosphere that had not changed during the recess. Quite the contrary! During the fortnight preceding the reopening, several events had complicated the diplomatic situation in the Near East. The Greeks had seemingly been able to reconstitute an army of 100,000, mobilized on the Thracian frontier. On April 15 the deposed sultan, who, through British aid, had gone to the Hedjaz, issued a proclamation from Mecca, declaring null and void the decree of the Angora Assembly, deposing him from the double office of sultan and khalif and naming a new khalif. On April 10 the Turkish Government announced that it had granted a sweeping concession in Asia Minor to a supposedly American group, headed by Admiral Chester, U. S. Navy, retired. More than a thousand miles of railways, with ports, and a modern city at Angora, were to be built by the Chester group at503 an estimated cost of $300,000,000, in return for which the right to minerals and oil was granted the Americans from Mosul to Samsun, a country believed to be abounding in undeveloped wealth.

Although the Chester group did not seem to have financial backing to cope with a concession of this magnitude, and was not taken seriously by financiers in New York, London, and Paris, the French Government made a vigorous protest, through General Pellé at Constantinople, refusing to recognize the validity of the part of the concession relating to the railway outlet to the Black Sea. The French claimed that the Samsun Railway concession had already been granted to a French group in 1914, before the outbreak of the war, in return for a loan on which heavy instalments had been paid by Paris to Constantinople. The British Government declared that Turkey had no authority to grant a concession involving the oil and minerals and projected railways of the Mosul region. The feeling aroused over the Chester concession, and the subsequent attempt of British and French bankers to have it set aside and a trade monopoly in Asia Minor granted to them, indicated that the negotiators of the Entente Powers at Lausanne were primarily representing the commercial interests of their countries.

The Turks fished so well in these troubled504 waters that they secured many more modifications of the proposed treaty—until it came to the point that Mustafa Kemal Pasha, through the greed of the European Powers, was securing their acquiescence on every point that did not involve directly their pocketbooks. Only on the capitulations—or rather the underlying principle of the capitulations—did the Entente Powers hold out. They wanted some sort of protection for foreign business interests in Turkey. France waived every moral issue. She stood firm only on the one point that French holders of the Ottoman public debt should receive interest in gold, not paper as the Turks insisted.

Because of the new Greek army Venizelos was able to win the abandonment by Turkey of claims to a war indemnity. Greece agreed to admit that she owed an indemnity, and to give Turkey control of the railway station of Adrianople at Karagatch on the left bank of the Maritza; in return, Turkey admitted that Greece was too poor to pay an indemnity. It was a typical Oriental bargain.

But the Eastern Question was not solved. The Lausanne Conference did not even mark a distinct forward step. This was seen when the Bulgarians overthrew Stambulisky. The Turks are back in Thrace.

505

Observers of European politics invariably write that the verdict of General Elections is the result of a number of causes, and that it is difficult to assert how a so-called paramount issue would have been decided had not other considerations entered in to confuse and influence the judgment of the electors. If this be true in European countries enjoying representative institutions, how much more true is it of the United States, where elections are held at stated intervals, and where great issues can never be brought before the country as they are in Europe? The American executive is vested with great powers, is not dependent upon Congress, and enjoys office for a fixed period. Midway in the Presidential term a national election is held that has no power to change the policies of the administration. When Presidential year arrives, the outs are determined to become the ins. A moot question is found—it is sometimes a question of secondary importance—around506 which the campaign centers. Is it safe to assume that the people cast their votes upon the merits of this question, throwing aside all other issues?

When Mr. Wilson, returning from Paris with the Treaty of Versailles, failed to secure its ratification without reservations by the Senate, he appealed directly to the people and declared that the Presidential election of 1920 would be a “solemn referendum” on the question of our entry into the League of Nations. Eminent Republicans who were convinced pro-Leaguers announced their intention of sticking by their party, and begged others to do so, on the ground that a vote for Mr. Harding was not a vote against American participation in world affairs. They deplored the attitude of politicians in both parties, who had never considered the League issue on its merits, and expressed their belief that the cause of international coöperation would gain more by the election of Mr. Harding than by the election of Mr. Cox. They based this opinion upon the Republican platform, which did not reject the idea of international coöperation, but only opposed the League of Nations without reservations, as Woodrow Wilson would have it. Give the Republican administration the chance, and we should be in the League more quickly than if the Democrats remained in power, they argued.

507 It is true that the Republican candidate stood on a platform, binding us to take the initiative in bringing the nations of the world together. As was so frequently said during the campaign, none was opposed to the attainment, with the coöperation of the United States, of a new world order through a properly constituted and properly functioning League of Nations. “We are not against a league of nations, and we should even have entered the Versailles League, had we been allowed to make the strictly necessary reservations,” said the Republicans. “The issue is the Versailles Covenant without reservations safeguarding the liberty of action of the United States.”

Almost immediately after his inauguration Mr. Harding declared that the American Government was studying the problem of how we could best help Europe, and pointed out the obvious fact that the burden of heavy armaments was the main cause of the inability of European states to put into execution programs for economic rehabilitation. Although the victory had resulted in the complete disarmament of their enemies, the Entente Powers were spending more money for military purposes than before the war. So was the United States, for that matter. The question of limiting land armaments, however, was complicated by the reparations question and the Bolshevist508 menace. Could not a beginning be made in limiting naval armaments? The Principal Allied and Associated Powers had complete and absolute control of the seas. The German and Russian navies no longer existed. Why, then, the mad race for more battle-ships? The victors could only be building against one another.

President Harding invited into his Cabinet two men peculiarly qualified to advise him. No outstanding figure in American life had enjoyed a better opportunity to study European conditions during the war and the Peace Conference than Herbert Hoover. The new secretary of state, Republican candidate at the preceding election, was an enthusiastic protagonist of American coöperation in world affairs. The President gave Mr. Hughes real authority in the State Department, and was not jealous of sharing with him what glory might accrue from success in administration policies.

President Harding and his advisers could not misinterpret the strong sentiment that prevailed throughout the United States, irrespective of party lines, to cut down the army and to modify the naval building program that was an inheritance of the Wilson administration. Generals Pershing and Bliss were the first to recognize the connection between a reduction of the military and naval establishments of the United States and the509 general problem of world peace. The press hailed with satisfaction their declarations. Then Senator Borah introduced a resolution, as follows:

The President is authorized and requested to invite the Governments of Great Britain and Japan to send representatives to a conference, which shall be charged with the duty of promptly entering into an understanding or agreement by which the naval program of each of the said Governments, to wit, the United States, Great Britain, and Japan, shall be substantially reduced annually during the next five years to such an extent and upon such terms as may be agreed upon, which understanding or agreement is to be reported to the respective Governments for approval.

The proposition for a naval holiday was indorsed by a conference in Chicago in May, attended by official representatives of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, the National Catholic Welfare Council, and the Central Conference of American Synagogues. Public sentiment enabled Senator Borah to get his resolution adopted as a rider to the Naval Appropriation Bill. The details of the plan had to be worked out carefully by the State Department. From a practical point of view, it did not seem possible to the Administration to ignore France and Italy, and Secretary Hughes advised the President that any discussion of naval armaments510 would inevitably bring up the subject of the balance of power in the Pacific. A proposal for a naval holiday, to be entertained by Japan, would have to take into account China and the Anglo-Japanese alliance.

After these matters had been considered by sounding the powers interested, identical invitations were sent to Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy, inviting them to participate “in a conference on the subject of limitation of armament, in connection with which Pacific and Far Eastern questions will also be discussed, to be held in Washington on November 11, 1921.” An invitation was sent also to China, in which the paragraph concerning naval armaments was omitted.

The unrecognized Far Eastern Republic of Siberia, Belgium, Portugal, and Holland asked for invitations, on the ground that any international discussion of Pacific and Far Eastern questions interested them as vitally as the other powers. On October 4, Belgium, Portugal, and Holland were asked to send delegates. The request of Siberia was refused, with the following explanation:

In the absence of a single, recognized Russian Government, the protection of legitimate Russian interests must devolve as a moral trusteeship upon the whole Conference. It is regrettable that the Conference, for reasons511 quite beyond the control of the participating Powers, is to be deprived of the advantage of Russian coöperation in its deliberations. But it is not to be conceived that the Conference will take decisions prejudicial to legitimate Russian interests or which would in any manner violate Russian rights.

It should be noted that the term “limitation of armament” was used in the original invitation and in all the later official correspondence concerning the conference. The American Government was anxious not to lead the people to expect too much of this first attempt to get the powers together to listen to reason on the subject of competitive armaments, and it was necessary to show that a naval holiday agreement was a benefit that could not be gained without the assumption of definite responsibilities and pledges in regard to international questions, the method proposed for the solution of which had hitherto been force alone.

The success of the Washington Conference depended upon the fulfilment of four conditions, the first of which affected all the powers participating, and the second, third, and fourth of which affected Great Britain, Japan, and the United States respectively. The conditions were: (1) that matters other than those on the agenda be rigorously excluded from the discussions; (2) that the British be willing to give up the supremacy512 of the sea; (3) that Japan agree to accept an agreement regulating the status quo in the Pacific in return for consenting to an inferiority in sea-power and the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese alliance: and (4) that the United States ratify a treaty binding us to coöperate with other powers in maintaining a fixed political status quo for a period of years in Eastern Asia and the Pacific. Without these conditions, limitation of naval armament was impracticable. If they were fulfilled, nothing that France, Italy, the lesser European states, China, or Russia (for the time being) could say, would wreck the adoption and execution of the proposed program of the conference.

In view of the many problems confronting Japan in world politics, discussion of which is beyond the scope of this book, it was predicted freely by Far Eastern experts that Japan would make embarrassing demands at the conference, and that the refusal to accede to them would lead to the withdrawal of Japan. But the same irresistible current of public opinion, voiced by a war-weary and tax-ridden people, forced Japanese statesmen to enter the conference with the idea that failure to arrive at an agreement was unthinkable. In October, just as the delegation was leaving, Tokio newspaper comment indicated this. For example, the “Yomiuri” said:

513

As to the questions of population and food, these are, of course, matters of life and death, and it is necessary to make efforts at every possible opportunity to secure an understanding with the Powers. But at the same time ... all intelligent men in this country are unanimous in taking the stand that there is no other means of solving these problems except by making our policy toward China thoroughly pacific and economic and by thus developing our trade and industry.... It is urged that the open door and equal opportunity are synonymous with equality of races, and that as such race equality should be proposed to the Conference. If the Japanese delegates should withdraw in case that proposal is rejected, Japan might be the victor from the point of view of international morality, but the practical result would be greater isolation. We cannot afford to attend the Conference in expectation of increased international isolation.

The British had long known that it was hopeless to expect to continue indefinitely the effort to keep ahead of the United States in naval construction. They were pitted against a people possessing superior wealth and means of production, whose Government was already committed to the elaborate program adopted in 1916. It was better to adopt the principle of equality of sea-power with the United States than to find themselves outclassed within the next decade. While it was true that American sentiment had turned against extravagance in naval construction, refusal on the part of the British Government514 to accept limitation of armament on the basis of equality would undoubtedly have resulted in a determination of the Americans not only to go ahead with their program but to match any program Great Britain might adopt as a counter-measure. British public opinion did not regard the United States as a potential enemy, as had been the case with Germany, and as would be the case with any other European country or Japan. Public opinion in the British self-governing dominions was in favor of the termination of the Japanese alliance, and this fact had to be taken into account by the British Admiralty. The British faced graciously a condition, and accepted it.

Disarmament, or rather limitation of armament, had become a policy almost universally favored among Americans. There was something of religious fervor in the spirit with which the Americans opened the conference. The program proposed by Secretary Hughes meant relief from taxation, of course. But to the man in the street it signified far more than that. Looking at the problem of both land and sea armaments from a more academic standpoint than the other Powers could afford to adopt, the American people believed that the naval holiday was the first step toward the genuine reëstablishment of peace and good will among nations. They were taken515 somewhat aback when it developed during the conference that the agreement limiting armaments would have to be accompanied by other agreements that appealed less to the imagination and awakened again the fear of foreign entanglements. But in order to secure the first agreement the Senate felt that it did not dare to refuse to ratify a four-power treaty, binding the principal Pacific powers to respect one another’s Pacific territories.25

When the conference finished its work at the beginning of February, there was dissatisfaction in many quarters in America. Some felt that the naval holiday should have included sweeping reductions516 and a fixed ratio in other kinds of naval craft than capital ships. Others argued that the conference, before breaking up, should have bound the participating powers to reassemble in the near future to consider land armaments. All believed that the old principles of world politics were too much in evidence in the treatment of China. But none was able to contest the statement of President Harding that the Washington Conference was epoch-making in that it marked the beginning, and a distinct step forward, on the path toward a new method in putting an end to competitive armaments.

The conference had also to its credit the diminishing, if not the removal, of causes for conflicts among the powers in the Far East. For a time, at least, there would be no more loose talk of the inevitable war between the United States and Japan, and the suspicion and discord resulting from the Anglo-Japanese treaty improved the relations between the United States and Great Britain, between Great Britain and her self-governing dominions, and between Great Britain and China. The subsequent withdrawal of Japan from Shantung indicated how the Washington Conference had made possible the fulfilment of Japan’s promise to President Wilson. On the other hand, the character of the decisions made at the Washington517 Conference was in no way harmful to the interests of Russia, and will not be upset when Russia becomes once more a factor in Far Eastern affairs. The non-participation of Russia, therefore, does not vitiate the work of the Washington Conference in the same way as the exclusion of Russia from the deliberations of the Lausanne Conference threatens to make ineffective its decisions as to the Straits and other Near Eastern problems.

From the success of the initiative of the American Government in the autumn of 1921, however, it is unsafe to draw the analogy that we should have been equally successful had we made the same proposal that the powers come together in our far-off and virtually neutral capital to make a similar beginning in solving the imperative problem of limitation of land armaments of European nations. We had a stake at Washington which we do not have in Europe. We had vital interests to safeguard which we do not have in Europe. We had means of bringing pressure to bear upon the participating powers which we would not possess in a land disarmament conference. At Washington we gained equality of sea-power with the greatest naval nation without having to pay heavily for it. No balance of power question or any other subject of international politics in Europe affects our interests518 in the way the balance of power in the Pacific and the amelioration of China’s international position do. At Washington we had the trump argument that if competition in naval armaments was not stopped we should be compelled to become the predominant naval power.

Naval disarmament was essentially an extra-European question. Land disarmament affects primarily the nations of continental Europe, and enters only secondarily and indirectly into American, British, and Japanese foreign policy. In contrast to the Washington Conference, the continuation conferences in connection with the Paris peace settlement, as we shall see in the next chapter, have been dominated by France’s fear of Germany and the anxiety of the other beneficiaries by the treaties to preserve their newly won independence and increases of territory. Reparations are subordinated to security, and security seems still to depend upon standing armies. Standing armies are a drain on the finances of states already on the verge of bankruptcy. And, inseparable from the question of reparations and security, from the standpoint of the European states, is the problem we vainly try to make a business matter, the settlement of interallied debts.

519

The peace discussions at Paris continued, as we have seen, throughout the year 1919. The Paris Conference had begun with an imposing array of statesmen from all over the world. Heads of governments and ministers of foreign affairs were the principal delegates of their respective countries. After the signing of the Treaty of Versailles the big fry went home. It was manifest that they could not stay away from their duties indefinitely, even if there were some of the most important matters affecting the peace settlement still undecided. But when December came and the Christmas holidays approached, it was also manifest that the questions still under discussion were too complicated and too vital to the political fortunes of the Entente Cabinets for a conference of subordinates to pass upon. Agreement, it was recognized, could be reached only by the same method that had prevailed in drafting the German and Austrian treaties, i. e., direct and secret bargaining among the heads of governments.

520 The Peace Conference lost its importance when the “Big Four” departed at the end of June. It petered out—there is no other way of expressing it—at the end of November, leaving unsolved the problem of the relations of the victors to Russia. The unfinished business on the conference agenda has been bothering the world ever since. The principal questions upon which the conference had failed to pass were: (1) settlement of the total sum Germany was to pay for reparations; (2) measures to apply if Germany proved unable or unwilling to do the bidding of the Reparations Commission; (3) apportioning among the victors the cash and the deliveries in kind received from Germany; (4) what should constitute German disarmament and how this was to be brought about; (5) how Upper Silesia could be detached by a plebiscite from Germany; (6) the future of Memel; (7) the status of Eastern Galicia, Bessarabia, Albania, and Montenegro; (8) how the eastern frontiers of Poland were to be determined; (9) the relations of the League of Nations toward mandated territories; and (10) the terms of the treaty with Turkey, which involved the claims of Greece and the northern frontiers of the French and British mandates. Later the question of interallied debts was raised by France and Italy, who insisted that the indebtedness of the victors to one another was inseparably521 linked with the indebtedness of Germany to the victors.

Had the victors possessed common interests in Europe and the Near East, most of these questions could have been left to experts, whose compromises would have been accepted as reasonable by the common sense of the governments and peoples concerned. Foreign policies of the Entente Powers, however, were hopelessly divergent, and governments had to take into consideration not only the defense of national interests abroad but also the retention of power when hostile parties at home were ready to seize upon any pretext to oust them. At the best, when governments have simply domestic issues to face, keeping the confidence of parliaments is a difficult task. In passing judgment upon the statesmen of the Entente Powers and the United States, whose efforts at constructive peace-making failed so signally, we must remember that they were not free agents, but that they had to be thinking constantly of currents of public opinion that threatened to sweep them at any moment from their high positions.

The necessity of continuation conferences arose from the lack of common interest in enforcing, and therefore of power to enforce, the terms of the peace settlement which all seemingly accepted in the first flush of victory. Statesmen522 and peoples alike soon discovered that the treaties contained provisions which, if literally interpreted, did not satisfy their real or fancied interests, nor the ambitions the attainment of which they believed the victory should have made possible. The League of Nations came into existence at the beginning of 1920. The United States refused to join it. The Entente Powers, for the reasons given above, did not feel that they could use it except as a convenient and amenable agency to further their own policies. Until the world-wide status quo was definitely settled by the harmonizing of British, French, and Italian interests, it was deemed better to continue to use the Supreme Council, a conference of ambassadors, and, best of all, meetings of Entente premiers. Continuation conferences, therefore, in which both the first and last words were spoken by the premiers of the three big powers, have been attempting for nearly four years to grapple with the unfinished business of the Paris Conference.

These conferences have been large and small, formal and informal, some lasting months and others merely week-ends, but all have been dominated—even those called for other purposes and dealing ostensibly with other questions—by what has come to be known as the reparations issue. The reparations issue, in turn, has never been523 discussed on its merits, as a problem of economics. Security for France, through the permanent crippling of Germany, has lurked in the background of every discussion in these international gatherings.

The first of these conferences, held in London and Paris in January and February, 1920, were too near the exchange of the ratifications of the Treaty of Versailles for reparations to be at the front. Italy secured from France and Great Britain consent to make Fiume a free state, in exchange for a modification of Italian “rights” in Dalmatia, as provided for by the 1915 treaty, and the recognition of her paramount interests in Albania. The United States protested against the decision of the Paris meeting to change Albanian frontiers in favor of Serbia and Greece. The Albanian question, as we have seen in another chapter, was finally solved by the ability of the Albanians to defend their independence against Serbians and Italians. The Adriatic question was left to direct negotiations between Rome and Belgrade.

The first continuation conference to attract public attention was that of San Remo, whose important decisions in regard to the treaty with Turkey have been commented upon in earlier chapters. It is not generally realized that on the agenda of San Remo the Ottoman Empire occupied524 third place. The first subject was the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, which was beginning to cause serious difficulties, and the second subject Russian affairs, which had been going very badly, indeed, for the Entente Powers owing to the collapse of counter-revolutionary movements.

San Remo marked the first difference of opinion between Great Britain and France on the reparations question. Lloyd George, seconded by Nitti, laid down the thesis to which the British and the Italians (until Mussolini) adhered with more or less consistency in succeeding conferences. The French began to realize that British and Italian interests were going to conflict with their purpose to use reparations claims to prevent the economic rehabilitation of central Europe. France was able to induce the other two powers to agree in principle upon coercive measures against Germany in return for yielding to Lloyd George’s proposals for the Near East and Nitti’s contention that trade relations would have to be resumed with Russia, even though the Soviet did remain in control. At San Remo, also, a secret oil arrangement was concluded between France and Great Britain, against which the United States later protested, and also a new delimitation of spheres of influence in the Near East.

525 On two points, however, the French yielded to the Anglo-Italian view as to method in enforcing the Treaty of Versailles. France agreed to take no punitive steps without consulting her allies, and—very reluctantly—to have German delegates invited to confer with representatives of the Entente on deliveries in kind and other means of making reparations payments. For this purpose it was arranged that the Entente Powers should meet at Hythe on May 15 to discuss the schedule of German payments and should then summon the Germans to come to Spa with definite, concrete proposals for fulfilling their obligations under the treaty.

Between Hythe and Spa two additional conferences were necessary, at Boulogne-sur-Mer and Brussels, to fix the amount of the indemnity and decide how it should be apportioned. Raymond Poincaré, president of the Reparations Commission, resigned in protest against what he called an infraction of the treaty, which had stipulated that the amount of reparations should be determined by the commission, after they had examined the extent of Germany’s resources. One of the most important functions of the commission, declared M. Poincaré in a public statement, was being usurped by the Entente premiers. All the world knew, however, that the pro rata distribution schedule was dependent upon the526 total sum the victors hoped to receive. Hythe, Boulogne, and Brussels revealed serious divergence of views among the victors, large and small. Italy especially felt that the improbability of ever getting any money out of Austria should be made up to her by a larger proportion of the German indemnity.

It was not until the delegates had actually come together at Spa that the proportionate shares in the German indemnity were determined as follows: France, 52 per cent.; Great Britain, 22; Italy, 10; Belgium, 8; Serbia, 5; the other states, 3. In addition, Belgium was allowed to transfer her entire war debt to the account of Germany and was given priority in the first gold payments. No amount of talking could bring agreement upon the total sum to be demanded, and the schedule of annuities.

The Spa Conference, convened on July 5, 1920, gave the Germans their first chance to discuss in open meeting the Treaty of Versailles. But this did not do them much good. On the contrary, after heated debates, threats were used to back arguments. An agreement was added to the Treaty of Versailles, defining the monthly amount of indemnities in kind, and reaffirming the right of the victors to insist upon the punishment of war criminals and the surrender of arms in the possession of German civilians and security police. Later in the summer new differences527 of opinion between British and French were revealed in conferences at Lympne and over the aid that should be given to Poland and to the new counter-revolutionary movement of General Wrangel in Russia.

At Spa the Entente Powers had promised Germany credits for food and raw materials to make possible the resumption of German production: for it was evident that Germany’s ability to transfer wealth abroad in the form of gold payments was exceedingly limited; that if a serious beginning of large-scale indemnity payments was to be made, Germany would have to sell manufactured articles in foreign markets; and that the factory-workers and miners could not produce effectively unless they were properly fed. At the suggestion of British economists, who had the ear of Lloyd George, a conference of experts met at Brussels on December 16, 1920, to make recommendations to the Entente governments to guide them in granting Germany the credits necessary to render practicable reparations demands. This conference reported that a total indemnity of 100,000,000,000 gold marks was possible, provided Germany received extensive credits for food and raw materials purchased abroad, and that the annual scale of payments be flexibly arranged to meet whatever economic situation might develop.

The French press and public opinion did not528 receive in a kindly fashion the recommendations of the experts. It was pointed out that some months earlier, at Lympne, the British had subscribed to a joint declaration to the effect that “the suffering and economic ruin resulting from the war should not be borne by the nations who did not cause it.” By extending credits to Germany France would be paying to Germany more than she would receive for a long time, and it was preposterous that Germany be allowed to regain her old economic prosperity while the north of France was still in ruins. This was the French attitude when the conference of Paris opened on January 24, 1921, to fix the reparations bill and the method by which it should be paid. The discussion was removed from economic to political ground, and it has remained there since that day. In the beginning, both Great Britain and France had regarded the reparations problem from a political standpoint. In 1920 the British shifted to an economic standpoint. This caused the divergence that was evident at Paris in January, 1921, and in all the conferences that have followed. In 1921 the British remonstrated, but in the end they yielded. After two years, in 1923, they finally felt that it was necessary to break with France on the ground that persistence in demanding the impossible would wreck the economic structure of Europe and create an impasse, resulting in irreparable529 harm to victors as well as vanquished.

It will be remembered that the treaty gave until May 1, 1921, for the total amount of indemnity to be fixed. Germany bound herself in advance to accept whatever sum the victors decided upon, to agree to make payments in the way they demanded, and not to consider as an act of war any punitive measure they might take to enforce their will. Stipulations of this kind, which had never before been written into a treaty, placed Germany completely at the mercy of her conquerors. They could make upon her any demands they saw fit, however impossible to fulfil, and could undertake reprisals if what could not be done was not done. The only protection to Germany, now that she was disarmed, lay in the fact that her creditors were several, who might not all agree that her permanent ruin would be to their best interests.

The Paris Conference met on January 24, 1921. On the first day Marshal Foch declared that Germany had failed to fulfil the disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles, and that the danger was so great that France would be justified, as a military precaution alone, in occupying the Ruhr Valley. This proposal, although tentative in form, as if to try out the Allies, brought an immediate and strenuous protest from British and Italians. The two delegations stood together also in rejecting France’s demand that the indemnity be fixed at 400,000,000,000 gold marks. 530 There was a lively argument between Lloyd George and Doumer. When the latter said that it was reasonable to expect 17,000,000,000 marks per annum from German exports, of which 12,000,000,000 could be taken by the Reparations Commission, Lloyd George retorted that the calculation was absurd. How could Germany pay for raw materials, coal, labor, etc., on the basis of retaining five billions out of seventeen billions? After five days of acrimonious debate, in which British and Italians pleaded for a practicable total sum, a compromise was effected. It was decided that Germany should pay in forty-two annual installments 226,000,000,000 gold marks, and for the same period an annual tax of 12 per cent on her exports. At the first default the Allies should have the right to take any measures, financial or military, that they saw fit. The German Government was summoned to send a delegation to London, after four weeks, “to agree to the decisions of the Paris Conference.”

At the London Conference, on March 1, Dr. Simons, the German foreign minister, declared that Germany never could pay any such sum, whose annual instalments were far beyond her total surplus wealth in the years of her greatest prosperity before the war. He made a counter-offer of 50,000,000,000 gold marks, less 20,000,000,000 already paid (according to German figures), but pointed out that even this sum was531 possible only if the decision in regard to Upper Silesia did not go against Germany. Dr. Simons suggested that if the value of payments already made was disputed, a joint commission should be appointed to determine it. Lloyd George delivered a long speech to the German delegation on March 3, in which he ridiculed their proposals and described them as “simply provocative.” Lloyd George two years later was taken to task in Parliament for his attitude at this London Conference. He frankly admitted that he knew the absurdity of the Entente program, but that it was insisted upon in order to force from Germany a counter-offer up to her real capacity to pay, and also that other factors entered into the decision of the British Cabinet to stand with the French. These other factors were, as we have seen in other chapters, the desire to keep France from opposing the British plan in the Near East by supporting French plans on the Rhine.

France, Great Britain, Italy, and Belgium sent a joint note to Germany, threatening to levy an import tax of 50 per cent on German goods entering their countries, and to force Germany to pay the tax, which would be pooled and divided as indemnity. The German Cabinet was firm in its refusal to pay down 12,000,000,000 gold marks on account before May 1 and to agree to the London program. Lloyd George himself proposed an ultimatum in which military occupation532 of the Ruhr Valley was threatened if Germany did not accept without reservation the indemnity schedule fixed at Paris on January 29. On May 5 Lloyd George told Parliament that he was sure of Germany’s yielding, for “with the Ruhr gone industrial Germany withers: it cannot exist.” With Marshal Foch on the Rhine and ready to march in, the German Government agreed to the Paris program. It was the only means of preventing the Ruhr occupation.

An economic conference met at Brussels on September 24, at the suggestion of the League Council, to take steps to prevent financial and economic chaos in Europe. Although invited, the United States refused to participate in the Brussels Conference, declaring that it was useless to do anything for European rehabilitation until old scores were marked off and a spirit of solidarity was developed. The Dutch expert, M. ter Meulen, proposed to establish in the countries on the verge of collapse a reservoir of collateral to be drawn upon if necessary to cover credits for imports, under the supervision of financial experts appointed by the League of Nations. At the end of the year French and British financiers met at Paris to discuss the organization of a corporation to finance the restoration of Europe, in which the United States and Germany would have a part. Because political conditions and not economic theories dominated in Europe, the conferences attended533 by economists and bankers had no result. These non-political gatherings looked at the reparations question on its merits, and therefore made recommendations in regard to Germany, Poland, Austria, and other smaller countries which, if adopted, would have infringed upon the treaties of the Paris settlement. The experts and bankers were accused of trying to upset the treaties. They could not free themselves from this accusation; for they were practical men, living in a world of realities, and not politicians, gambling on futures.

On January 6, 1922, the Entente premiers met with the Reparations Commission at Cannes. The Germans were asked to come to Paris and to hold themselves in readiness to be summoned to Cannes if needed. Lloyd George offered France a defensive alliance in return for modifying the French attitude toward Germany, which he said would keep Europe indefinitely in turmoil. Premier Briand was inclined to accept the British offer, which would have replaced in substance the defunct Anglo-American understanding to come to the defense of France in case of a new German aggression. But bitter opposition developed in the Chamber of Deputies. Briand hurried back to Paris to explain the Cannes negotiations and defend his decision to meet Great Britain half-way. He called for a vote of confidence, which was refused. Former President Poincaré, leader534 of the opposition to concessions to Germany, succeeded Briand.

The change in government in France put an end to the hope of Entente solidarity and foreshadowed the military occupation of the Ruhr. Poincaré agreed, however, to another conference, proposed by the Italians, which was to meet at Genoa in the first week of March, “of an economic and financial nature, of all the European powers, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Russia included.” In the meantime, the Reparations Commission was to allow a temporary delay in indemnity payments, without considering Germany in default, contingent upon the turning over of 31,000,000 gold marks every ten days. The United States declined an invitation to participate in the Genoa Conference, on the ground that the matters it would consider were of purely European concern.

The new Poincaré Cabinet asked for a month’s delay in convening the Genoa Conference, and stipulated that revision of the Treaty of Versailles should not be discussed, and also that Soviet Russia must acknowledge the foreign indebtedness of Czarist Russia before the question of recognizing the Moscow Government was brought before the conference.

For the first time the vanquished and the Russians met together with the victors, when delegates from all the European countries assembled535 at Genoa on April 10, 1922. This fact seemed to augur well for the success of the conference. Up to this time the Entente Powers had failed to reëstablish peace in Europe because they had outlawed half of Europe. Whether Germany and Russia deserved to be put in Coventry is not to the point. None disputed the justice of insisting that Germany live up to the obligations she had assumed in order to escape the overrunning of her territory (as she had overrun for four years the territory of other nations) and the disagreeable consequences of defeat in a war in which she had been the challenger. None was inclined to receive Soviet Russia with open arms into the councils of the nations of whose political and social institutions she was the outspoken enemy. On the other hand, the purpose for which the conference had been called could not succeed without the coöperation of Germany and Russia. The statesmen of the Entente Powers could not hope to ameliorate economic and political conditions in Europe unless they possessed and were willing to use the means of coercing Germany and Russia or unless they intended to treat these other two great powers on the basis of give and take, as they treated each other.

Because neither alternative was considered, the Genoa Conference was a complete failure. The Entente Powers began wrong. They held preliminary meetings to decide upon their program,536 assuming that the rôle of the German and Russian delegations would be simply that of acquiescence. The two outcast powers retaliated in a startling way. They signed a treaty at Rapallo, whose terms were published, reëstablishing diplomatic relations with each other and settling war claims and financial obligation by reciprocal cancelation. The Treaty of Rapallo torpedoed the conference. The Entente Powers were not prepared to waive reciprocally their claims against one another, much less treat with vanquished Germany and faithless Russia on any such basis. After several weeks of futile debate, during which the Entente Powers maintained the attitude they had adopted in the beginning, the conference broke up.26 Further negotiations concerning minor matters in which agreement might be reached were laid over for a conference to meet at Amsterdam in June. The principal questions upon which the rehabilitation of Europe depended seemed impossible of solution.

Despite its failure, the Genoa Conference was a useful meeting; for it cleared up a number of misapprehensions, and served as a warning and indication of the general tendencies of the policies of the participating nations. For instance, behind537 Russia’s intractability and truculence was evident her anxiety to make concessions to world-wide public opinion. Her leaders no longer gloried in her isolation, and they frankly admitted the failure of some of their theories and the very limited success of others. After four years they began to show themselves sensitive. This proved that they were beginning to recognize the dependence of Russia upon the rest of the world. When put to the test, the Germans were as unwilling as the Turks later showed themselves at Lausanne to break with the Occidental powers and throw in their fortunes unreservedly with Russia. The intention of Belgium to pool her interests with France was also revealed. But the most striking lesson of the Genoa Conference was the coming to the front of the theory that reparations could not be considered apart from interallied debts, and that France and Italy saw in future bargaining over a reduction of their reparations claims the possibility of being freed from their indebtedness to Great Britain and the United States.

It had long been sensed by the American State Department that French and Italian statesmen had this idea in mind. Fear of walking into a trap or being put in an awkward and ungracious position had much to do with the American decision to remain aloof from these conferences, a policy which had first been stated by our unofficial538 representatives at the Brussels Conference. The British Government determined to anticipate bargaining on any such basis. Two days before Poincaré came to London to confer with Lloyd George in August, Secretary Balfour issued a statement on interallied debts in which he skilfully tried to “pass the buck” to the United States. He declared that it would be impossible for Great Britain to entertain any proposition to reduce or cancel the sums owed her by her European allies so long as the United States insisted upon the repayment of the British war debt. Had not Great Britain been a borrower from the American Government in 1917 and 1918 because of the necessity imposed upon her of furnishing credits to an almost equal amount to European countries?

The Balfour note was issued on August 5. On August 7 Poincaré, accompanied by several of his colleagues, arrived in London to confer with the British Cabinet on coercive measures to be taken against Germany. The French premier was unmistakably disconcerted by the unexpected declaration of British policy on interallied indebtedness. He knew very well that American public opinion was against forgiving any of the debts and that the comment of the American press had been sarcastic and vehement. Uncle Sam did not intend to pay the German war indemnity! Lloyd George and Poincaré found539 themselves in more hopeless disagreement than after the Cannes Conference. It was only for a moment that the Russo-German treaty had thrown them into each other’s arms. Things were approaching a crisis in the Near East. Fascismo was preparing to oust the Government in Rome. The London Conference accomplished nothing.

In the autumn of 1922 the startling events in the Near East and the uncertainty as to what foreign policy for Italy would grow out of the coup d’état of Mussolini postponed for a few months the Anglo-French rupture over reparations. Poincaré’s mind was made up. But the negotiations with Turkey and the assembling of the Lausanne Conference were coupled with the downfall of Lloyd George and the consequent General Election. When the British electorate returned a Conservative majority, it was believed that the new Government, presided over by Mr. Bonar Law, would be more amenable to the French arguments. Lord Curzon, who remained as foreign secretary, was showing himself very friendly to France at Lausanne. Poincaré believed that the time had come to have the Reparations Commission declare Germany in default. But opposition developed as strong as under the Lloyd George Government. Bonar Law had failed to recall Lord d’Abernon from Berlin, and Sir John Bradbury was not superseded in the540 Reparations Commission. The British ambassador to Berlin and the British member of the Reparations Commission had been considered “creatures of Lloyd George,” and their retention came as a blow to French public opinion.

In view of British opposition to going into the Ruhr, M. Poincaré might have postponed this fateful action had it been in his power to do so. But this was the program for carrying out which he had been put in power just a year earlier. The break had been as imminent with the British then. Public opinion was growing impatient, and it is beyond doubt that the Chamber of Deputies, after the Christmas recess, would have refused a vote of confidence if the Poincaré Cabinet had held back any longer. In judging the responsibility for what followed, we must remember that it was with Poincaré what it frequently is with a leader in a crisis: go ahead or get out. The policy adopted in such a case does not represent the sober judgment of the statesman, but only the determination of the politician to remain in power.

In December Poincaré had conferred with Bonar Law and Mussolini in London. He knew what was ahead of him. He conferred with his Cabinet, who agreed that the Chamber of Deputies would give the Government a free hand only if the course of action France intended to take in the matter of reparations was definitely stated.541 Poincaré appeared before the Chamber on December 16 and declared that France was determined upon measures of coercion against Germany, as authorized by the Treaty of Versailles, with or without the coöperation of Great Britain. A vote of confidence was accorded by an overwhelming majority.

The last continuation conference assembled at Paris on January 2, 1923, and was attended by three premiers, those of France, Great Britain, and Belgium, and by a substitute for the Italian premier. Its outcome was never in doubt; for the irreconcilable points of view of Great Britain and France toward the problem of reparations had long been evident. Already, on December 26, the Reparations Commission had decided, against the vote of Great Britain, that Germany was in voluntary default in wood deliveries for 1922. The British press for a long time had been pointing out that there was little hope of getting any money out of Germany if a default should be declared, followed by punitive measures.

Poincaré and Bonar Law stated in detail their proposals for dealing with Germany. Both suggested reducing the amount to 50,000,000,000 gold marks, and agreed that if this were done the concession should be accompanied by a demand for comprehensive financial control of Germany. The difference of opinion was over the542 method of guarantees. Bonar Law asserted that Great Britain would consent to the further occupation of German territory only if Germany defaulted after the revised schedule went into effect, and then only if the Allies were unanimous. This meant, of course, a flat refusal to admit the wisdom of the occupation of the Ruhr Valley. France wanted to pay her debts to Great Britain with reparation bonds issued by the Reparations Commission. Great Britain retaliated by proposing that the French and Italian gold deposited in London during the war as security for advances be now turned over to Great Britain in partial payment of debts due to her. Italy presented again the suggestions made by Mussolini at London three weeks earlier. Mussolini had been in sympathy with the Poincaré program, both as to productive guarantees through occupying more German territory and as to the method by which debtor allies should acquit their obligations to the creditor ally; but the Italian Government was opposed to military action and would not pledge itself to coöperate with France and Belgium in occupying the Ruhr.

On the second day of the conference Poincaré tried in vain to get the British to agree to use the French plan instead of theirs as the basis of discussion, and to admit as an accepted principle, which it was not necessary to discuss, the French contention that any moratorium should be accompanied543 by the seizure of productive guarantees. Bonar Law retorted that granting these two demands would be equivalent to accepting the French program. In the debate that followed, only two facts emerged clearly: that Great Britain did not believe that the Ruhr occupation would force immense sums of money out of Germany, while France did; and that France had made up her mind to go ahead and take measures against Germany, not only without Great Britain’s aid, but despite Great Britain’s advice. The British premier bowed to the inevitable. He had failed to dissuade Poincaré; Poincaré had failed to persuade him. So they agreed to disagree.

The net result of three years of continuation conferences is well summed up in the comment of a mysterious anonymous writer in the Paris “Figaro,” who wrote on March 31, 1923:

Since the Treaty of Versailles, where is the Entente? Where was the Entente in the ten conferences which ten times had diminished our proper share, and in the shabby dealings which the British have repeatedly resorted to against us? Where is the Entente when the British confiscate our gold, when they keep Mr. Bradsbury [sic] on the Reparations Commission to check our demands, when they establish Lord d’Abernon at Berlin to strengthen the resistance of the Germans?

544

The American attitude toward post-bellum problems is summed up in the four words cut into the tomb of General Grant. We prefer Grant’s “Let us have peace” to Foch’s “The war is not ended.” The British are even more eager than we to settle European affairs in such a way as to leave no open sores, no burden of long-term military responsibilities on the Continent. Four hundred million people have to live side by side, and, whatever the virtues and sins, certain European nations cannot indefinitely lord it over others, say the British. Those who have been wronged ought to be compensated, those who have been good ought to be rewarded, and those who have been bad ought to be punished; but practical common sense suggests limits to compensations, rewards, and punishments. After the Treaty of Versailles, Germany still has a population one and a half times that of France, and outcast Russia is the largest country of Europe in area, natural resources, and population.

In London and Washington, and to a large extent545 in Rome, also, there has been a tendency ever since the war to place most of the blame upon France for the unsettled state of affairs in the world. In speeches of statesmen, in interviews with “high officials,” in inspired newspaper articles, Germany has been accused of stupidity and lack of good faith in her tactics. But, coupled with the complaints of Germany’s conduct, hints, inferences, sometimes open charges have abounded that French policy is making the settlement of every problem affecting the rehabilitation of Europe difficult, if not impossible. British, Italians, and Americans, who have served on the various commissions appointed to watch over the execution of the Treaty of Versailles, have been virtually unanimous in condemning the French for obstructionist tactics or an uncompromising attitude in conferences with the Germans; for inspiring the Poles in their foolish ventures; and for intimidating the Belgians into a constantly provocative attitude toward the Germans, against the better judgment of King Albert and his advisers. Informed public opinion has gradually come to feel that the Near Eastern policy of France is cynical and opportunist, and that swash-buckling militarism and the ambition to dominate Europe have changed habitat from Berlin to Paris.

The friends of France protest that their admiration and confidence have not been shaken by546 what they read. But who does not confess to misgivings about the invasion of the Ruhr? Who does not believe that Lloyd George and Bonar Law have spoken more reasonably than Poincaré? Who does not feel that the unsheathed sword of France is retarding the establishment of peace in Europe and throughout the world?

“What’s the matter with France?” is not an unjustified question, but we cannot answer it fairly unless we consider its corollary, “What’s the matter with ourselves?” Lest it be thought that I do not understand and sympathize with the exceeding difficulty of the French people and Government in shaping their post-bellum policies, it is wise to pause before going into the Ruhr with the French, and outline the fears of France and their justification. This will save us from becoming too pharisaical!

We borrow a French word to express an idea for which the French themselves use another word. We speak of a person as being naïve in his reasoning or attitude, but the French would say simpliste. Simplisme is the error in reasoning of neglecting elements of a problem that ought to be considered in arriving at a solution. Because we are self-centered sentimentalists, we Anglo-Saxons are simplistes. In building up briefs to justify our actions and to condemn the actions of others, we admit contingency only when contingent factors affect us and have influenced547 us. When others cry out, “But what would you have done in our place?” our answer is, “We are not in your place.” The answer is final. Thus do we dismiss disagreeable and unwelcome conclusions.

Not only because it is unfair and unchivalrous, but also because it is dangerous, we must avoid comfortable and comforting simplisme in our thinking about the European situation. It may be true that the unsheathed sword of France is disastrous to reconstruction and to the return of normal conditions, but does it follow that France is wrong in not having put back into the scabbard her sword? Could France have sheathed her sword before now? Can she afford to sheathe it as long as the United States remains aloof, with Britain tending to follow, from European affairs? If Europe is still under arms in the fifth year of “peace,” is the fault solely, or even primarily France’s? Or is Germany to blame? Or Poland? Can we look for the trouble in Bolshevism? Each of these questions opens up a field for speculation. By the mouths of our statesmen and the pens of our editorial writers we criticize and denounce and advise, but until we ask ourselves whether the attitude of France may not be due to what we have done and what we have left undone, we follow false leads. Winning the war came through pooling of resources. Will winning the peace come in any other way?

548 When May 1, 1921, was set as a date on which the total amount of reparations due from Germany to her victors should be fixed, it seemed a long way off. American delegates urged that the amount the Allies intended to exact be decided upon immediately and be stipulated in the treaty, but the Allies would have had to determine the proportion of indemnity each country was to receive. This could not have been done during the Peace Conference, which had already too many friction-breathing problems on its hands to risk another. It involved the filing of claims of all the victors. With the fluctuation of exchange and the uncertainty of cost of labor, material, and freight, those who suffered damages could not even approximate the sum necessary to make good their losses. The French advanced a powerful argument against the American suggestion of a fixed indemnity when they said that, since all admitted the liability of Germany to be far more than could be collected from her, it would be wise to wait a year or two to see how hard hit Germany was and how the world would recover from the economic consequences of the war, before deciding how much money could be collected. Mr. Lloyd George supported the French contention. Having recently won a General Election on the promise to make Germany pay all the expenses of the war, he did not dare to return549 from Paris with a treaty containing a fixed sum for reparations.

Just as I have tried to show, in discussing the internal affairs of Germany since 1918, that the Government could probably have done no more than it has done in the matter of reparations, it is possible on the other side to show how the French Government has been compelled by public opinion to keep hounding Germany for money. The admission of a fixed indemnity in the treaty was not necessarily planned by the French to give them an indefinite strangle-hold upon Germany. At the time they may not have realized that the stipulation concerning the trial of war criminals, which Germany could not fulfil, and the disarmament clauses, which gave unlimited opportunity for quibble and dispute, together with the unpaid bills for reparations, would furnish a legal excuse for retaining the Rhine provinces and a technical ground for the further invasion of Germany. The weapons were at hand. Public opinion clamored for reparations. Briand was thrown out of power to make way for the more energetic Poincaré. Ought we not to give due weight to the popular outcry in France for reparations as a powerful factor forcing or tempting the French Government into its present policy?

Great Britain and the United States have no budget deficits to face. We explain this by our550 willingness to tax ourselves and by drastic reduction of military and naval expenses. “An admirable example the British set us, and we are following it,” said a treasury official to me in Washington. “And an admirable example the British have set the other Allies in funding their debt to us. Now, if the French would tax themselves, if they would pay their debts, and if they would put their army back on a peace footing, they wouldn’t be in such a hole.” The same evening I read in Washington’s most influential newspaper, “If the French stop bothering the world about a debt they will never collect, and realize that prosperity comes from working, as we Americans do, we shall have peace.”

Although it has been impressed upon them over and over again, British and Americans do not seem to understand that northern and northeastern France were industrial and mining regions, from which France derived most of her wealth; that these regions were ruined by fighting over them and by the German occupation; and that France still suffers not only from the loss of their normal revenue but also from the necessity of incorporating in the national budget enormous sums for reconstruction. Up to the end of 1922 the French Government had advanced from the Treasury, or guaranteed in principal and interest on bonds floated, the huge sum of 85,000,000,000 francs for reconstruction.

551 Neither the British nor we face this unique problem. Yet, when we speak of the French taxing themselves and cutting down expenses to avoid budget deficits, we give smugly the illustration of ourselves and how nobly we are solving financial problems, as if there were a similarity between our situation and that of France. We can get along without the German indemnity because the Germans did not kill millions of us and cripple our industries in Pittsburg and Chicago. We can tax ourselves and not break under the load, although we groan because the war, taken for its entire period, made us wealthy. The British were hard hit, but, as Mr. Austen Chamberlain complacently explained to the House of Commons, the map of the world showed why the British Empire need not worry about meeting its obligations.

Economists agree on two points: that Germany cannot pay what is demanded of her, and what she was compelled to agree to pay by the May ultimatum of 1921; and that the plan of making Germany pay according to her prosperity (that is, the tax on exports) will be worked out only if the creditors of Germany take over the governing of the country.

The first point is not hard to understand. Payments abroad are made by favorable trade-balances. Gold marks are to be found by selling goods. How many gold marks Germany could552 pay into the coffers of other countries would depend upon her surplus over what she had to pay for imported raw materials and food-stuffs. Consequently Germany’s good faith alone was not sufficient to enable her to live up to the obligations she assumed. Faced with an impossible financial task, she had to default.

The second point is more subtle. If we had no internal revenue inspectors, and no laws to compel individual men and corporations to show their books for inspection, American national honesty would not stand the strain put upon it. In France, on the same day the Ruhr invasion was approved on the ground of Germany’s bad faith and voluntary default, the reporter of the budget declared that the Government had failed to obtain income tax returns on 85 per cent of the earnings of the year 1922! To get the sixty million inhabitants of the German Empire working for a generation to pay their conquerors sums the amount of which depended upon their prosperity would require rigid control of public and private budgets down from Berlin to the smallest commune and corporation. For if we did not govern the Germans and tell them what they should and should not put into their budget for expenses, in a very short time we should find that they had no surplus. Operating expenses and “indispensable” public works would take all the money the Government could raise in taxes. Private enterprises553 know how to find ways of spending money and improving their plants up to the point where nothing is left beyond the bare margin necessary for cost of production to meet competition.

The British have well grasped these two points. Not needing the indemnities as the French need them, not having that internal and political economic problem to face, the British have come to feel that reparations are not, after all, of prime importance. Insisting upon them, and furnishing practical means for their collection, would involve unwelcome German competition in world markets and the maintenance of a standing army in Germany. The game would not be worth the candle. And it meant more than indemnities for British prosperity to have Germany restored rapidly to economic health. The tone of the British press is unmistakable: Germany must pay, of course, but do not count upon our help in making her pay, and, above all, we must not pay for her! If American public opinion, now at ease because we are outside the European muddle, had any conception of what helping to collect the indemnity meant, our reactions would be the same as those of the British.

France and Belgium have used force ostensibly to collect indemnities. As far as the French and Belgian people are concerned, whatever may be the ulterior motives of their governments, the armies are considered in the double rôle of collectors554 and defenders. They cost a lot; but the people ask themselves: What else can we do? We have no right to ask France to sheathe her sword until we are prepared to offer a practicable alternative to the compulsory collection of the indemnity. Since we know that Germany cannot pay without injury to British and American commercial interests and without involving Great Britain and the United States in intervention in the affairs of Germany, it is our duty to give some constructive help to France in her financial impasse. To denounce Germany is futile. To scold France is shameful.

If the Germans have proved that they are in earnest in carrying out the program of reparations payments they propose in order to get France out of the Ruhr, ought not the French to put their army immediately on a peace footing, cut down expenses, get back to work? We point to our own sensible example. Throughout the English-speaking world the minds of the people have been concentrated for several years now on the “return to normalcy.” We are suspicious of militarism, and our determination not to encourage France or any other nation in keeping things stirred up has much to do with our attitude toward interallied debts.

But here, as in the indemnity question, we have considered the situation in terms of ourselves. We are not worried about Germany, because we555 have nothing to fear from Germany. Her navy is sunk, and we have taken measures to prevent its recreation, especially in the matter of submarines and naval aircraft. We feel that Germany’s merchant marine is crippled for a long time, and that the lessons of the war will enable us to prevent a revival of German political and economic propaganda outside Europe. As a result of the war we have attained the things men fight for, security and prosperity. If we still felt insecure or if we believed that Germany was still in a position to threaten our prosperity, our attitude toward Germany would be different. Until we were the victors, no matter what the cost, we could never have been persuaded to lay down our arms. Putting ourselves in place of France, then, can we honestly argue that France should sheathe her sword? Or that she could afford to sheathe her sword?

There is a military party in France, of course, as there is in all countries; and one finds Bourbon and Prussian types of mind in high places. But in a country ruled as France is ruled, militarists, jingoes, and imperialists are able to shape policies only in so far as the great mass of the electorate finds itself in fundamental agreement with their fears and hopes. As long as French public opinion fears Germany, plans for reducing Germany to impotence will be listened to. As long as French public opinion believes that it is possible556 to make the Germans contribute an important part to France’s yearly budget, there will be no irresistible sentiment against keeping under arms enough soldiers to force Germany to pay.

It is a mistake to think that the French are blind to fact and logic because of their hatred and fear of the Germans. One does not know French character who says that the French are trying to kill the goose and still hope for the golden egg. The French think things out, and they do not deceive themselves as we do. They know that they run the risk of killing the goose in trying to get the golden egg, but they need the egg so badly that they are willing to take the risk. And, after all, it is not a risk; for they think that it would be as advantageous to them to kill the goose as to have the egg.

If one could persuade the French to forget their history from 1870 to 1918, to believe that their industries and mines put them in a position to compete on equal terms with Germany in world markets, that budget deficits did not need to be met, that the Lorraine frontier was as good a defense as the English Channel or the Atlantic Ocean, and that a nation of fewer than forty millions could raise as strong an army by a levée en masse as a nation of over sixty millions, we should find them as “reasonable” as ourselves. By being “reasonable” we mean trusting Providence that everything will work out well in the end.557 If only the French were “reasonable”! Surrounded by a plethora of this world’s goods, we see no reasons for the fear of the Frenchmen who wonder how they are going to make both ends meet. All they have to do is to get back to work! Safe from attack in our Anglo-American geographical isolation, we are impatient with the French for keeping their army mobilized, for attempting to make Poland a strong ally to replace Russia, for raising African armies to fill the gaps caused by the hecatomb of the nation’s youth, and for drawing the claws of a beast whose attack would be fatal were he given another chance.

We tell France that the peace of the world cannot be definitely disturbed for the sake of satisfying the extreme demands of one nation. We express our belief that France’s apprehensions are exaggerated. We warn the French that indeterminate detention of the Rhine provinces will create a new Alsace-Lorraine and lead to another war. We repudiate the thesis of French nationalists, that the only safe frontier for their country is the Rhine. We wonder why there are no statesmen and publicists in France to oppose the propaganda of militarists, imperialists, and extremists.

Such statesmen do exist. Briand, Painlevé, and Caillaux see France’s future in peaceful coöperation with Germany. With rare exceptions French publicists are agreed that a Napoleonic558 épopée cannot be repeated without ending in a disaster greater than that of a century ago. The French are sick of war, and the internal reaction to the Ruhr occupation shows that they are not in the mood to be led into military ventures. But they do not purpose to let pass the unique opportunity of assuring their safety by their own efforts, seeing that they have been deserted by their comrades in arms.

In coping with this state of mind, British and American words must no longer be contradicted by British and American deeds. To meet the French argument of the Rhine as a strategic frontier, Great Britain and the United States signed a supplementary treaty on the day the Treaty of Versailles was signed, promising to aid France in case of a new German aggression. This treaty was not ratified. London and Washington alike, while assuring Paris that the thought of a new German aggression was absurd, were unwilling to commit themselves to aid France automatically in case of a German attack. Since we acted thus, had we the right to remonstrate with France when she took the steps that she thought were necessary to protect herself? If we were as sure ourselves as we tried to make France sure that Germany would not attack again, why did we not give France the guaranty? It would have cost us nothing, and, since we were sure that Germany was going to be good, it would not559 have involved us. The French are more logical, more reasonable, than we are. They realize that we never believed what we said about Germany’s intentions in the future, else we should have given the guarantee.

Before France and Belgium entered the Ruhr there were already signs of restlessness in Great Britain, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Italy over the prolonged trade losses due to the failure to settle the reparations question. As revealed in speeches by Sir Eric Geddes and others who had always been friendly to France, a feeling has been growing that the unsheathed sword of France is preventing the restoration of peace and the economic rehabilitation of the whole world. However much we may sympathize with the provocation that finally made France enter the Ruhr, who does not believe that playing a lone hand against Germany and invoking the argument of superior force, if persisted in, will bring terrible retribution upon France? The military advantage is only temporary. Vital statistics of the two countries point to the inevitable superiority of Germany in the not distant future no matter what measures, desperate and far-reaching, France may have taken in 1923.

Our attitude of constant criticism and advice, while carefully keeping ourselves free from assuming obligations, is as untenable in the Ruhr crisis as it was in the Near Eastern crisis. In560 view of the fact that we failed to approve Wilson’s promise to guarantee France, the least we can do is not to advise and remonstrate when France takes the measures that she thinks are necessary to protect herself. On the other hand, those who encourage France to use her sword are rendering her a worse service than those who cavil at her, unless they can honestly assure France of our support. For her own sake, for the sake of peace, and for the well-being of the world, France ought to sheathe her sword. But the honorable and the practicable way to get her to do this is to offer her our sword in case another 1914 arrives.

561

In tracing the question of reparations from Germany through three years of continuation conferences, we have seen how France and Great Britain were unable to formulate and adopt any policy that would afford a practicable solution. When the time came to fix the total sum, as provided for in the treaty, Great Britain yielded to the insistence of France and allowed a sum to be named which economists with one accord declared to be absurd. Under threat of occupation of the Ruhr Valley, the German Government accepted the Allied ultimatum. It was evident that neither France nor Great Britain expected Germany would or could pay the bill presented in May, 1921. But the motives for assessing Germany far beyond her capacity were different.

The British Government believed that there were sources of wealth that could be tapped for reparations, if only sufficient pressure were brought to bear. Germany was an industrial nation, like Great Britain, and her statesmen and562 captains of industry knew that rehabilitation in world markets depended upon doing the right thing in the way of reparations. The British contended that the bill should be cut down if Germany made a decent effort to meet her creditors half-way, and that if a bit of bribing accompanied the bullying the question could be settled to the satisfaction of all parties concerned. The British were eager to see an end to the upset condition of Europe, which retarded seriously the recovery of trade upon which they were dependent. The economic aspect of the reparations question was paramount, if British interests were to be protected; and Bonar Law was no more ready to ignore the economic considerations than Lloyd George had been.

To the French the recovery of reparations from Germany had been a political question from the time the Treaty of Versailles was signed. The guarantees for the execution of the treaty provided by the Rhineland occupation were deemed insufficient. The Cologne area, south of the Ruhr, was to be evacuated in 1924, the Coblenz area in 1929, and the last troops withdrawn from the Mainz area in 1934. If this progressive evacuation were allowed to take place, where would France stand after fifteen years? Economists, financial experts, and bankers might argue convincingly about the best plan for getting reparations563 from Germany. France could not afford to agree to any practical program for reparations. For if she did, and Germany paid up, the Rhine frontier and the sword kept pointed at the heart of industrial Germany would no longer be possible. Rid of her enemies, Germany would swiftly prepare a war of revenge. Poincaré had explained the determination of France to take extreme measures on the ground that without large sums from Germany, immediately paid, France would be unable to avoid a financial crash. But the money really mattered little. The prime consideration was to make France secure by rendering Germany impotent. The Bonar Law proposals afforded Germany an opportunity to break loose from the strangle-hold of France. To prevent this French public opinion was behind Poincaré in risking the disruption of the Entente.

After the failure of the Paris Conference, which terminated abruptly on January 4, 1923, the French press declared that France and Belgium intended to force Germany to pay the sums stipulated in the May, 1921, schedule, but that the measures adopted would be purely economic. On January 9, Poincaré told the Chamber of Deputies that the Allied Governments (with the exception of the British) had decided to send engineers and experts into the Ruhr, and that564 there was no thought of extending the French military occupation beyond the actual positions already held in the Rhineland nor of the permanent occupation of the Ruhr. A limited number of French and Belgian troops would form a body-guard for the new Ruhr Commission. The plan was to supervise the distribution of coal and coke, and to have sent to France and Belgium and Italy sufficient to pay the reparation amounts in default and for the current year. The great industrialists and the German people, dependent upon Ruhr coal, would hasten to comply with the orders of the Reparations Commission. It would soon be seen that the Germans had been bluffing. As for the inhabitants of the Ruhr, no difficulties were anticipated. In fact, they were ill disposed toward the capitalists and the Berlin Government. Under French control they would be well paid and would have better and more abundant food.

The French soon discovered that they had as completely misjudged the reaction of the Germans to the Ruhr invasion as the Germans had misjudged the reaction of the Belgians in 1914. In the twentieth century national feeling still transcends class feeling; and men do not live by bread alone. Force of any kind is resented by the common people, but most hateful is the force of the foreigner. Was it strange to expect that the565 Germans of the Ruhr would act differently from the Belgians and French in Northern France? Speaking at Péronne in the last year of the war, Clemenceau made a statement that I have never forgotten: “Partout il y a des ruines, mais les hommes, eux, ne sont pas en ruines, et, de même que les Français ont étonné le monde dans la guerre, ils l’étonneront encore dans la paix.”27 One cannot draw a boundary-line and say that the common people on one side of the line are men, with noble sentiments, and on the other side animals, with no sentiments at all. There may be a difference, through culture, in the educated classes of different nations; but, given the same degree of civilization, human nature is pretty much the same. When the French entered the Ruhr they found that the Germans were loyal to their country, and acted as they had acted, when the tables were turned. This upset the calculations of Paris and Brussels, and confronted the two Governments with the problem of breaking down the passive resistance of millions of people.

On January 9 the Reparations Commission declared Germany in wilful default in 1922 coal deliveries by three votes to one. Sir John Bradbury cast the minority vote. The American observer,566 Roland W. Boyden, said that it would be easy for him to remain silent, but that he wanted to record his personal opinion. Germany, according to Mr. Boyden, had made “a very considerable effort in a very difficult matter and had attained a very large measure of success.” If he were making a report he would go further than simply to explain his reasons for believing Germany less culpable than she appeared in the matter of the particular defaults in question, and would explain that the conditions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles had been demonstrated by experience to be impossible. Moreover, he believed that that impossibility had affected not only Germany’s financial situation and her financial obligations to the Allies, but that “the continuation of these conditions had already resulted in great loss of money to the Allies and would result in still further loss so long as they were maintained.”

The British and American point of view was not heeded. On January 10 the French and Belgian Governments, in a note to the German Government, announced their intention to “despatch to the Ruhr a mission of control composed of engineers and having the necessary power to supervise the acts of the Kohlensyndicat and to assure by virtue of orders given by its President either to the latter syndicate or to the German transport service strict application of the schedules567 fixed by the Reparations Commission and take all necessary measures for the payment of reparations.” The next day Germany protested to all the powers that had signed the Treaty of Versailles “against the oppression applied toward Germany in contradiction to the treaty and international law. The German Government does not intend to meet violence with violence nor to reply to the breach of the treaty with a withdrawal from the treaty.” On the same day President Ebert issued a manifesto, exhorting the inhabitants of the Ruhr Valley to remain calm, and declaring that “the execution of the peace treaty becomes an absolute impossibility, and at the same time the living conditions of the suffering German Nation are disorganized.”

The French and Belgian troops marched into the Ruhr on January 11. Their first objective was Essen, but in a few days the occupation was extended to the other centers of Westphalian coal production. The German authorities and population did not resist, and the local police coöperated with the invaders in maintaining order. But that was as far as coöperation went. The Kohlensyndicat had already transferred all its records to Hamburg. The German Government ordered the operators not to deliver coal to the French and Belgian authorities even though it were paid for. The mine-owners, at a meeting568 called by the French authorities on January 15, refused to obey General Degoutte’s order to continue deliveries, on the ground that they had to obey the order of their own Government. It was suggested that negotiation for coal deliveries should be carried on between Paris and Berlin. Thereupon the six largest coal producers were arrested and sent to Mainz for trial by court martial. The miners employed by the arrested men promptly went on strike. Wherever French soldiers appeared in mines or factories the workers quit immediately. There were no exceptions. The solidarity of the workers with their employers and the Berlin Government amazed and baffled the French and Belgians. Threats and arrests had no effect.

When the invaders tried to move the coal and coke already mined, the German Government issued orders to railroad and Rhine navigation officials and employees to transport no reparation coal. This measure completely tied up Ruhr traffic, blocked the Rhine ports with barges, and necessitated the militarization of the intricate system of railways. But the French and Belgian Governments did not have the one hundred and twenty thousand trained railwaymen and canal-boat and tug hands to grapple with the situation. The mine-owners paid their striking workmen, and full pay was sent from Berlin to the railwaymen.569 Where the French succeeded in moving trains and barges, sabotage began. Bridges and locks were dynamited, signal-stations and switches tampered with, and vital parts of machinery removed from locomotives and tug-boats. Efforts, partly successful at first, were made to run locomotives and rolling-stock into unoccupied Germany. The local authorities refused point-blank to coöperate with the French and Belgians, and this movement spread throughout the Rhineland, except in the British zone. (The Americans had withdrawn from Coblenz within a fortnight after the Ruhr occupation.) Hotel- and restaurant-keepers joined with shopkeepers in boycotting the invading troops.

French retaliation took the form of fining, imprisoning, and deporting Government officials, industrialists, and superintendents and chief engineers of the mines; expelling wholesale customs and railway employees and their families; confiscating state properties in the Rhineland and Ruhr; seizing money in transit to branches of the Reichsbank and found in municipal treasuries and post-office and railway-station tills; requisitioning hotels and restaurants; closing shops; seizing custom-houses; and putting a cordon around the invaded territories. The French military authorities announced that they would issue export licenses and collect the taxes. The570 German Government forbade manufacturers and operators to apply for these licenses. During the winter and spring business came gradually to a standstill.

In the first four months of the Ruhr occupation France and Belgium received less coal and coke than they would have got in a fortnight of normal deliveries. The cost of the occupation was appalling and required the maintenance of a military establishment that grew by leaps and bounds to six times the figure originally planned for. French and Belgian francs fell 25 per cent, while German marks depreciated to one-two thousandth of par and reached almost the vanishing point on foreign exchanges. There was remarkably little bloodshed, and not as great hardship to the Ruhr inhabitants as one would have supposed. But the gulf of hatred separating the peoples was greatly widened, and the Germans seemed to have recovered to a certain extent from their complete abasement of the years succeeding the great defeat. The recovery was of a dangerous kind, however, as it tended to play into the hands of the reactionaries. The Ruhr workmen who never had any too much love for their employers made a hero of Thyssen, and especially of Krupp von Bohlen, who was sentenced by a regimental court martial to fifteen years’ imprisonment for supposed complicity in an attack on571 French soldiers at the Krupp works in April, in which no French were hurt but thirteen Germans were killed and many wounded.

The extension of the French occupation cut off the British in the Cologne area from contact with unoccupied Germany and led to an insistent demand in the British press for the withdrawal of the Army of Occupation, following the American example. Critics of the Bonar Law Government declared that Great Britain was being unnecessarily humiliated on the Rhine. Had it not been for commercial interests involved, such a complaint would have received little attention. It is a quality of British officials to be fair-minded; and, while they did not relish the position they were in, the military and civil authorities at Cologne realized that the location of the Ruhr Valley made it necessary for the French to extend their lines around the British zone. The opposition of British commercial interests and of Liberal and Labor leaders in Parliament was far more serious. In the first three months of 1923 the Ruhr occupation caused serious losses to British firms, which were scarcely offset by the German orders for Welsh coal and the consequent profit to the shipping trade. It was realized that Germany could not find the credits to continue buying in British markets. The two war premiers, Asquith and Lloyd George, declared572 in Parliament that four months of the Ruhr experiment were sufficient to show the disaster of the undertaking, not only to Germany and France, but to the entire world. They insisted on British intervention. Lord Robert Cecil proposed that the Government invite the French Government to bring the question before the League of Nations.

The Poincaré Cabinet was disappointed in the failure of Italy to back the Ruhr policy more vigorously, and was alarmed over the growing opposition in Belgian labor and shipping circles. Protests had come in from Sweden, Holland, and Switzerland. The two latter countries declared that their treaty rights on the Rhine had been infringed upon, and that their industries had suffered from the failure to get Ruhr coal. Most serious of all was the split in the great steel organization in France, which had been supporting the Poincaré Government, if not actually inspiring it. The Schneiders, the largest single firm in France, which owned Le Creusot, withdrew from the Société des Forges de France in April as a protest against the policy of the Wendel and other groups, who believed that if France stuck it out Germany would surrender unconditionally. The Schneiders did not relish the idea of Ruhr products competing in French markets.

In every public utterance during the winter and573 spring of 1923 Poincaré made it clear that France and Belgium were at one in their intention to stay in the Ruhr until Germany paid the schedule of reparations fixed in May, 1921. He said, moreover, that France would not treat with Germany or discuss any conditions until the German Government abandoned the policy of passive resistance in the Ruhr. This meant that Germany could settle the reparations issue only by abandoning the sole weapon she had and thereby consenting to France’s indefinite occupation of the heart of industrial Germany.

Despite this uncompromising attitude, Lord Curzon urged Germany to make a direct offer to France. He stated what all the world knew, including the Germans, that if the demands of the victors had been impracticable, the offers of Germany had failed equally to take into account the facts of the situation. Before the Treaty of Versailles was imposed the German delegation had offered to pay 100,000,000,000 gold marks, but the offer was coupled with unacceptable conditions, retention of Upper Silesia, a League mandate to Germany for her former colonies, and other concessions that the victors could hardly be expected to accept. In 1921, when the time came to fix the total amount, Germany offered 50,000,000,000 gold marks, still with the stipulation concerning Upper Silesia. In both instances there574 was a wide discrepancy between the Allied and German estimates as to the value of German payments since the war.

Following the British suggestion, the Cuno Cabinet sent a note to the Entente Powers and the United States on May 5 proposing that the obligation of Germany as to payments in cash and in kind under the Treaty of Versailles be fixed at 30,000,000,000 gold marks, of which by a bond-issue at normal rates on the international money-market, 20,000,000,000 gold marks were to be raised before July 1, 1927, 5,000,000,000 before July 1, 1929, and 5,000,000,000 before July 1, 1931. As an alternative Germany was willing to leave the whole reparations question to an international commission, as had been suggested by the American secretary of state. Germany would also agree to submit to international arbitration all conflicts of any kind between herself and France. However, Chancellor Cuno declared that Germany would continue her passive resistance until the French evacuated the areas “occupied in excess of the stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles.”

Before the German note was received the French press had declared that it would be rejected. It was felt that France could not afford to go back on her previous statement of policy, i. e., that the German Government rescind all the575 orders that had been given for passive resistance in the Ruhr before negotiations were begun. In other words, France, holding what she considered to be the trump card, demanded unconditional surrender on the part of Germany. Quite logically the Paris journals pointed out that the Poincaré Cabinet could not remain in power if the Ruhr expedition were confessed to be a failure. France and Belgium simply had to continue to affirm that the occupation of the Ruhr was legal and that German resistance was an infraction of the treaty. On the other hand, it was equally true that the Cuno Government would be overthrown if it surrendered unconditionally.

A strenuous effort was made by Bonar Law and Lord Curzon, who were beginning to feel the pressure of public opinion in Great Britain, to enter into conversation with Paris, Brussels, and Rome, and to see if the Entente Powers could not be induced to formulate a joint response to the German offer. Although it was intimated that Great Britain was willing to join in rejecting the Cuno note on the ground of its inadequacy, the French and Belgian Cabinets decided to reply immediately and to reject the German offer on their own responsibility. This was done. On May 8 the French and Belgian replies were published in Berlin. The Germans realized that there was no hope of inducing France to release her hold on the576 Ruhr. Not only was the German offer spurned but the Cuno Cabinet was informed that France and Belgium did not propose to release their tangible guarantees until the sums assessed against Germany by the Reparations Commission were paid in full. The French argued that at the last minute Germany would submit to France in order to avoid bankruptcy and internal chaos. France and Belgium made it clear that they were willing to take the risk of this if Germany did not submit, and that as the conflict was a matter between Germany and the powers occupying the Ruhr, London and Rome would not have to reply to the German note.

Neither Bonar Law nor Mussolini, however, felt that it would be good policy to ignore the German offer. Had not France and Belgium been showing a tendency, which had to be checked, to regard reparations from Germany as a matter interesting themselves exclusively? The British and Italian replies both pronounced the offer as “far from corresponding, either in form or in substance, to what might reasonably have been expected,” as Lord Curzon put it. The British answer called attention to the fact that the British program, which was rejected by the other Entente Powers in January, had provided for nearly double the amount Germany now offered. How could Germany expect that 30,000,000,000 gold577 marks would be accepted as a basis for discussion? The Italian answer declared that Germany failed to realize the importance of taking into account Italian reparation claims. These had been reduced to one tenth of the amount to be recovered from Germany on the ground that Italy was to receive compensation from Austria and Hungary, which had not been forthcoming. Both Governments omitted any reference to the Ruhr, or to Germany’s alternate proposal to refer the reparations question to an international tribunal.

One point in the Italian note was significant. It laid stress on the intimate connection between reparations and interallied war debts and insisted that this problem be solved at the earliest possible moment in order to “relieve the cost of reconstruction of the Italian invaded provinces.” The sacrifice demanded of Italy by Germany was therefore too great. The Paris “Temps,” commenting on the British and Italian notes, said that Great Britain and Italy, by encouraging the Germans in their passive resistance, must be held partly responsible for the inadequacy of the German proposition. Great Britain, declared the “Temps,” had to realize that “the amount France and Italy demand from Germany will necessarily depend upon the sums claimed from them by England.” Virtually every other Paris newspaper said in substance the same thing. By the middle578 of May it had become clear that if the deadlock was to be broken, and a tolerable sum fixed for German reparations, pressure in the Ruhr was not going to accomplish that purpose. Hope lay in a reconsideration of interallied indebtedness; and a part of the sacrifices to be made would be demanded of Great Britain and the United States.

At the beginning of May the French Government announced that two thirds of the expenses of the Ruhr occupation had already been recovered from coal and coke shipped out and taxes levied, and that it would not be long before the occupation “made expenses.” This news was sent out from Paris with an air of great satisfaction; but French newspapers revealed the fallacy of the Government’s statement. Making expenses was not the first objective of the Ruhr occupation, and in the announcements of policy and the many notes of the winter and spring of 1923, had not the French and Belgian Governments declared that the Ruhr occupation would bring in reparations? If one drew up a balance sheet it would be necessary to put on the debit side the complete cessation of deliveries in kind since the second week of January and the resultant loss to the two Governments. This was the only logical way of computing the cost of the occupation. Not until France and Belgium could meet all their military expenses out of the Ruhr, force the resumption579 of the 1922 rate of payments and deliveries in kind, and then see coming in a surplus over that amount could the Ruhr occupation be fairly asserted to be profitable.

In judging the Franco-Belgian policy, other considerations than that of financial return demand attention. Has the occupation of the Ruhr lessened Germany’s capacity to pay reparations? That is the business consideration. Has the Franco-Belgian policy weakened the political situation of France and Belgium in post-bellum Europe? That is the political consideration. Has the reign of martial law hurt France’s prestige as a chivalrous nation, scrupulous in her treatment of the civilian population at her mercy, and rigorous in her observance of international law and the elementary principles of justice? That is the moral consideration. The observer of European financial markets and international political currents, and the reader of the most influential journals of all European countries, must give a reluctant affirmative answer to all three of these questions.

In one of the many conferences on reparations the Japanese ambassador to Great Britain declared, “Gentlemen, there is only one question before us: ‘How can we best make Germany pay most?’” The Japanese ambassador was talking common sense. But his point of view580 was as little heeded in the heated discussions as had been the point of view of General Bliss several years earlier, when he insisted that the armistice with Germany was a military question and should be so regarded. The statesmen in 1918 had no intention of rendering Germany immediately and completely impotent; for they wanted a treaty in which terms could be incorporated, on the excuse of Germany’s power, that would serve their political and economic interests. In the reparations question what the statesmen feared most was a final definite and workable solution proposed by bankers and economic experts; for they intended to establish an indefinite protectorate over Germany. There is no doubt that Germany’s capacity to pay has decreased steadily since June, 1919, and received a still more serious blow by the rejection of the offer of the Cuno Government in May, 1923, to submit the question to any tribunal the Entente Powers might name, and agree to abide by its verdict.

The frank annoyance of the British Government at the “unnecessary precipitancy” of the French reply to the Cuno offer reveals a seriously disrupted Entente. In the House of Commons and in the House of Lords the same statement was made on May 8:

It was the view of His Majesty’s Government that the best and most natural course of procedure would be581 to return to a concerted reply ... the more so as the German note was in response to a suggestion made publicly and officially by the Foreign Minister of the British Government and as the problem involved ... was one in which the Allied Powers, and not merely France and Belgium alone, are deeply concerned.

The isolation of France from her old comrades in arms, through whose aid alone she was put in the position where she could coerce Germany, is accompanied by dissatisfaction in Belgium, and by a feeling of resentment and suspicion, as we have already indicated, on the part of other European countries. The prudent policy for a country with the birth-rate of France would seem to be reconciliation with Germany and conciliation with Russia. Whatever gain France may enjoy from a temporary success of the Ruhr occupation is bound to be offset by the feeling aroused in the minds and hearts of the generation growing up in Germany. Wise statesmenship ought to have taken this fact into account.

The saddest result of the Ruhr occupation is the flood of newspaper stories, cartoons, and editorials in every European country, directed against the abuse of military power in the relations of the army of occupation with the civilian population of the Ruhr. An invading army invariably gets itself involved in difficulties, and goes from one doubtful proceeding to another.582 That is in the nature of the thing. Public opinion hates abuses of military power and verdicts of court martials, no matter how great the provocation or how just the cause of prosecution. The moral indignation of the world was a powerful factor against Germany during the World War; and within the same decade as the Marne and Verdun it is tragic to see in the most reputable newspapers of Stockholm, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Rome, and London, over the signature of bishops, university professors, journalists, and historians, stories like the following, which I have taken from the London “Observer” of May 6, 1923.

Thousands of innocent persons lie in the gaols, closely crowded together, six or ten in a single cell, often without separation of the sexes—gray civil servants put in with criminals, woman officials (e. g., five from the Wiesbaden post office) with prostitutes; often punished by withdrawal of food for days together and always under the control of Moroccan warders. Many have waited for months without examination, being left entirely ignorant of the reason of their arrest; others have been condemned to years of captivity or forced labor ... and all this invariably without preliminary trial, by administrative order, for no crime but that of “criticizing” the administration, or at most of obeying the orders of the German Government instead of those of French military authorities.... It is thus that, among many other examples, the Traffic Inspector Gottfried of Ludwigshafen was carried583 off to twenty years’ captivity in the French colonial mines.

Of course our minds go back to the days of the World War when the Germans did things of this kind, and we might argue that it is natural and just for their civilian population to have a taste of what their military authorities inflicted upon French and Belgian civilians. But during the war we flattered ourselves that we were better than the Germans and would not have stooped, had we been in their place, to make war upon the weak and unarmed. It is more than a question of ethics. It is a question of weakening the excellent case we had against the Germans by dragging ourselves down to their level. Right-minded men the world over intensely abhorred the German abuses of military power in Belgium and Northern France. It is permitted therefore for warm friends and admirers of France to question the wisdom of a policy that lays the French army open to charges of abuse of power, vandalism, brutality, and unjust verdicts of courts martial. No matter how great the provocation, the impression is always bad.

In the summer of 1923 the French may assert that the settlement of the Ruhr dispute is a matter between France and Belgium on the one side and Germany on the other. But clairvoyant Frenchmen do not indorse this attitude, which, if persisted584 in, spells ruin for France and Belgium in the future. No greater calamity could fall upon France and Germany alike than the adoption by the rest of the world of the easy rôle of Pilate. France is on top now; to-morrow Germany will have her day. Is it no concern of the rest of the world? The circumstances being as they are, is not the victory of France, in this question, as disastrous as her failure? Upon a fair and just solution of the Franco-German conflict over reparations, in which France shall be assured just reparation for damages done during the war but at the same time be not allowed to follow the Bismarckian policy, which the present generation of Frenchmen seems to approve, depends the question of a durable peace or a new and more horrible war than the last one.

585

“Your money lend and lose a friend” is an adage that the former comrades in arms have been ruefully recalling ever since the stirring days of the World War, when they were borrowing and spending with no thought of the day of reckoning. We kept no books in which were charged up to one another’s account the expenditure in human lives. We gave our own lives and our son’s lives, and expected nothing in return. The appalling loss of life and the human wreckage were cheerfully accepted; for that was traditionally the expected sacrifice of war. Each member of the coalition contributed without stint, for service on all the fronts, all the fighting men it could muster; and if there was ever any haggling about quotas, the public knew nothing about it.

But when it came to money and material wealth there were no free-will offerings, no pooling of resources. Although money and credits furnished the sinews of war and were used as weapons to crush the common enemy, books were586 kept down to the smallest outlay. The Allied powers did not forget to charge up every item against one another; and while the soldiers were fighting on the fields of battle, the accountants were buried in vouchers and ledgers, working night and day to record the biggest expenditures the world had ever seen. When the armistice came, there were outstanding bills. It was taken for granted that accounts would be settled. On the books friends were to all intents and purposes on the same footing as enemies. Whether it was the individual in account with his own Government, or one Government in account with another, it was assumed that amounts owing would be paid with interest.

All the warring nations had internal obligations to meet. In the period of reconstruction as well as during the actual war years, successive loans had been floated, partly by pyramiding, at increasing rates of interest. In every country the national debt had grown beyond belief. Most of it was owed at home, but millions of people had patriotically invested their own savings and reserve funds and the capital essential to their business enterprises. Governments had to meet the interest charges, and, because they needed to borrow still more money, their people had to be assured that all that had been advanced would be paid back. In many of the countries staggering587 under the load of unprecedented internal obligations, budget deficits confronted the Governments, and new loans had to be floated to keep abreast of current expenses. And yet there were added burdens, for reconstruction, for demobilization, and for liabilities of all kinds, most important of which were pensions and interest on war loans. As if these seemingly insurmountable obstacles to balancing budgets were not enough, the vanquished nations had reparations to pay, and the victors owed stupendous sums to one another. With the exception of the United States and the British Empire, gold reserves were depleted, further credit abroad was shut off, and paper money was progressively issued, in defiance of economic laws, until inflation drove down European exchanges to the lowest levels in the record of international finance.

In four years French money dropped to one-third of par, Belgian between one-third and one-fourth, Italian one-fourth, Czechoslovak one-eighth, Jugoslav one-twelfth, and Rumania one-fifteenth. Greek, Bulgarian and Turkish money kept well above Rumanian. Poland, on the other hand, shared with Russia, Austria, and (after the invasion of the Ruhr) Germany the problem of keeping the paper money from becoming altogether valueless. Hungary and the Baltic Republics (except Finland) gave up the struggle of588 supporting their money in international exchanges in the early part of 1923.

For a time the English-speaking peoples looked upon the decreasing values of Continental European moneys with indifference or amusement. Trade with the Continent, which could not pay pounds sterling or dollar prices, fell off and threatened us with a crisis of over-production. This was a danger to which we quickly adjusted ourselves, with the consoling thought that the business would have had to be done on credit anyway. Who could afford to sell on credit to countries already virtually bankrupt and with a constantly falling currency? The English-speaking peoples had the rest of the world to trade with, and it seemed that there was nothing to do but to wait until some of the countries affected by chaotic financial conditions became bankrupt and repudiated their worthless paper money, as revolutionary France had repudiated the assignats and the American Southern States had seen their Confederate dollars become worthless. The more stable European countries could in time conquer the problem of inflation and rebalance their budgets.

Were it not for the two intimately related problems of reparations and interallied debts, Great Britain and the United States would probably not589 have become involved in the political and financial implications of the European financial situation. But all these countries owed Great Britain and the United States large sums, representing either advances made during the war or sums due on reparations account. This being the case, it was impossible to expect the Continental European countries to settle their accounts with one another until some agreement had been reached with Great Britain and the United States in regard to the accounts of all the Continental European countries with the creditor nations. The problem of international debts was still further complicated by two facts: that Great Britain owed nearly as much to the United States as was owing to her from her European debtors; and that the United States, while demanding preferred settlement for her bill against Germany for the expenses of the army of occupation, had failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and had made a separate peace with Germany.

The American Government was unwilling to accept the thesis set forth in the Balfour note of August 1, 1922, that Great Britain’s debt to the United States should be considered in connection with the debts of Continental Europe to Great Britain. It was unwilling, also, to defer the payment of the Rhine occupation bill until the general590 question of German reparations had been satisfactorily solved. Adopting the attitude that “business is business,” the American Government not only concluded a refunding agreement with Great Britain, independent of European financial problems, and sent a Treasury official to France to press the claim for America’s share in the German payments for military occupation, but also announced its expectation that other debtors should follow Great Britain’s example.

Of the Continental European nations Finland alone has arranged to repay her obligation to the United States. The United States holds sufficient German assets to cover reparations, and a German-American commission met in Washington, in March, 1923, to adjudicate the claims of American citizens against the German Government. No progress has been made in the matter of claims against other enemy countries. France, Italy, and the smaller European countries, except Finland, have made no move to pay the interest and amortize the principal of the loans advanced by the United States.

What has happened, however, as we have already seen, is that our European debtors have announced the policy of making reimbursement to the United States dependent upon the collection of reparations from Germany and the other vanquished nations. The argument by which they591 support this policy is easy to grasp. They say: “We cannot pay the United States and Great Britain unless we receive the reparations granted us by the treaties of the Paris settlement. If we modify or waive our claims, as embodied in the Paris treaties, we must look to the United States and Great Britain to cancel our debts to them.” For several years this has been the answer of the French press to American and British criticism of France’s reparations policy; on May 11, 1923, it was stated officially in Mussolini’s reply to the German offer to settle reparations on the basis of 30,000,000,000 gold marks.

American public opinion, while sympathetic to France and Belgium in the Ruhr occupation, feels that debts should be paid all around, and is unwilling to accept as valid the contention of contingent payments or to realize that our European friends have the right to expect us to let up on them if they let up on Germany. Europeans ask: “Why should the conquerors pay, while the conquered go scot-free? Are we not the victims? Were they not the aggressors? It is incredible to expect us to forgive our enemies when you are unwilling to forgive your friends?” The Americans retort, “Why should we pay the German reparations, for this is what your proposal amounts to?”

592 The principal interallied debts are as follows:

According to the ratio finally decided at the Spa Conference, France, Great Britain, and Italy are to receive respectively 52, 26, and 10 per cent of whatever reparations Germany finally pays, while Belgium is a preferred creditor of Germany, and Italy has a lien on the major part of Austrian and Hungarian reparations.

The figures are only approximate, for they do not take into account compounded interest; and there is some doubt as to the propriety of including the Russian obligations to France, most of which date from before the war and are owing French nationals and not the French Government. Roughly speaking, the United States is the largest creditor, with $11,000,000,000 owing her,593 while Great Britain follows a close second, with $10,000,000,000 on her books against Continental European countries. Great Britain stands to be the heaviest loser; for the payment of none of her loans is assured, while more than 40 per cent of the American advances is represented by the loan to Great Britain, arrangements for the paying of which with interest have already been concluded.

When we consider the short time that the United States was in the war, its cost was staggering. And we must remember that the United States lent no money out of surplus, but that her ability to grant the huge credits to her associates in the World War was due to the successive Liberty loans and the Victory loan, which are internal obligations the interest and amortization charges of which are being carried in our national budget. On the other hand, the money did not actually leave the country, but was spent by the borrowing Governments for goods and food-stuffs manufactured and raised in the United States. The repayment of Great Britain’s debt does not work great hardship either on the British or ourselves; for Great Britain and her Dominions are large holders of American securities and have extensive investments in Mexico and Central and South America. The Continental European belligerents sold most of their North and South594 American securities during the war. The repayment of $6,500,000,000 to the United States would have to come largely through an excess of exports over imports from the United States.28

The transfer of surpluses of wealth from one country to another is an economic problem of both reparations and interallied debts that has not yet been solved. In the midst of all our discussion of the insistence upon the settlement of reparations and interallied indebtedness, where is the economist who has shown us how this can be done without the willingness of French markets to absorb German goods and American markets to absorb European goods?

However little it may appeal to us on first sight as a business proposition to cancel French and Italian debts in return for the sweeping modification by these two nations of indemnity demands upon Germany, we may yet come to see that such a course would be not only a magnificent contribution to world peace but also good business for ourselves. Is it not the alternative to a low tariff and dumping? Will it not lead to the economic rehabilitation of Europe, to which reparations and interallied debts are now the barriers? For our595 farmers and manufacturers alike, is not the restoration of Europe’s purchasing power a benefit worth a sacrifice of loans that either are bad debts or can be repaid only to our detriment?

Interallied indebtedness has also its psychological side. “Your money lend and lose a friend” is a true saying. The attitude of the American people on interallied indebtedness is a serious obstacle to Franco-American and Italo-American friendship. We cannot exact payment of the sums owing us without creating dislike, antagonism, and resentment. This may be a sad fact, but it is none the less true.

In conclusion, there are two points upon which Americans have the right to insist, and it would be foolish to cancel interallied indebtedness without insisting upon them.

The material advantages the United States gained from the World War were far less than those gained by the other victorious participants. Putting aside as hypothetical the argument that Germany, had she won, would have attacked us next (for it is an argument that does not take into proper consideration the importance of sea-power), we can say to our European comrades in arms, including Great Britain, that they ought to take into account not only the intangible rewards of victory, such as crippling a powerful adversary and competitor, but also the spoils—reparations596 already made, in which we did not share; shipping; territory annexed; and the division of rich German colonies and a portion of the Ottoman Empire. It is idle to say that these are not worth while and are liabilities rather than assets. If they are of no value, what shall we think of British and French statesmen who insisted on having them and who have been willing to spend blood and treasure, and to risk the friendships cemented in the war, in order to possess and enjoy them?

Even when the idea of reparations was enlarged to cover pensions, the United States did not lay claim to a share. This was in itself a generous contribution to our European associates. Nor did we ask for a sphere of influence in Turkey or a share in the German colonies. Our attitude was one of complete disinterestedness and of an unselfishness unparalleled in the history of peace-making by victorious coalitions. If we are now asked to make an additional contribution, should we not insist first of all upon a quid pro quo for our money in the form of definite understanding about the open door in Africa and Asia, especially in the mandated territories? Ought we not also to insist upon the military and naval neutralization of European possessions on the American continent and reciprocity in trade agreements between all these possessions and the countries of North, Central, and South America?

597 The second point is one on which we need light badly. Just what are the holdings of citizens of debtor nations and of debtor governments in the United States and other parts of America? Our debtors are pleading poverty and the impossibility of paying reasonable interest, much less of amortizing, what they borrowed from us. Just what truth is there in this plea, which has the tacit indorsement of some of our largest banks? Speaking at Toledo on October 16, 1922, Secretary Hoover declared:

The settlement of international balances between America and Europe contains factors that are in their volume unique in international commerce. For instance, the annual expenditure of American tourists abroad, the remittances of emigrants in the United States to their relatives, the growing volume of investment made by our people in foreign countries, interest upon investments in the United States of private citizens of our debtor countries, and other items of so-called invisible exchange combine to furnish a large supply of our money to Europe with which they in turn can make payments of interest on debts or for the purchase of goods from us. In total to the world these sums amounted to about $1,500,000,000 in the last fiscal year, which was, indeed, a year of depression, and these are sums which with peace in the world will grow constantly in the future. These sums are largely expended directly or indirectly in our debtor countries.... During that fiscal year the world had a paying power to us in excess of goods bought from us of about $750,000,000.

598 Mr. Henry A. Forster, the New York lawyer, has gathered interesting statistics from various sources to prove that Great Britain, Germany, and France receive from investments abroad, many of them in the United States, incredibly large annual interest. It may be, therefore, that the United States is not the creditor nation—in the actual sense of that word—that she is assumed to be; and before we release any of our debtors abroad (they are debtors to the holders of American Government securities, and not to our Government out of Treasury surplus), it would be well for us to find out what are the investment holdings of these Governments and their citizens in securities of every kind in the United States, on which interest is being sent abroad. Then there will be a clearer and fairer conception of the merits of this question on both sides of the Atlantic.

599

Out of the Peace Conference and the welter of policies that followed it students of international affairs have learned one thing, if nothing else: to distrust the efficacy of formulas to improve relations among nations. Despite the sacrifices and the heroic deeds of countless millions of civilized human beings, despite the educational propaganda of the war years, despite the high ideals for the triumph of which we believed that we were fighting, there was a scramble for spoils immediately the war was ended. The Paris Peace Conference conclusively proved that there had been no conversion of statesmen from their faith in traditional foreign policies to the widely heralded and much vaunted principles of “self-determination,” “rights of small nations,” “making the world safe for democracy,” “a durable world peace,” and “the league of nations.” No effort was made to repudiate the Prussian idea that “might goes before right,” and it was soon evident that the war fought to liberate subject600 peoples had resulted in the destruction and ruin of some of them and in bringing out in the rest of them the bad traits we condemned the Germans for showing.

The story of Europe since 1918 gives us furiously to think; for we have seen our statesmen and leaders unable to abandon the traditional rules of the diplomatic game in their efforts to solve post-bellum problems and the great mass of intelligent men and women unwilling to inform themselves about and think constructively upon questions affecting world peace. It was natural that there should have been indulgence in prejudices and passions during the war. Whether in a righteous cause or not, fighting implies the abandonment of the inhibitions of civilized society and a return of the law of the jungle. Violence and the reasoning faculty cannot be used coördinately in the settlement of disputes. The excuse for putting our trust in force was that our opponents would listen to no other argument, and that when we had won we intended to restore the rule of reason. Our methods and our aims were totally different from those of our enemies, so we said, and we were saving civilization while they were trying to destroy it.

In fairness to our statesmen it must be recognized that public opinion in all the victorious countries called out for a victors’ peace and that601 if the world now exhibits symptoms of social disintegration and is for the time being on the down grade, it is because the passions engendered by the war did not die out and because hysterical peoples forgot or disclaimed in the hour of victory the goal that had made them capable of stupendous sacrifices and effort during the war years.

The Entente Powers and the United States are beginning to recognize that their failure to agree upon a common policy in Europe and the Near East is condemning them to forego the advantages of their victory in the World War. Protagonists and critics of the Paris peace settlement are still poles apart. On one point, however, all must agree. The Treaty of Versailles, and the other treaties modeled after it and dependent upon it, have failed to bring peace to Europe and the world. It is fruitless to talk about the bad faith of Germany, the abstention of the United States, the disconcertingly long lease of life of Soviet Russia, the imperialism of Great Britain, the militarism of France, and the unreasonableness of small states and subject nationalities; for each of these factors, taken by itself, is a result rather than a cause of the failure of the treaties. If we content ourselves with calling each other bad names and seeking to find in some one unruly national current or attitude the source of our ills, the universal chaos will only602 increase. It would not be hard to build up a convincing brief against the foreign policy followed by every nation, friend and enemy, since the armistice of November 11, 1918. But we get nowhere unless we are able to show that the present state of affairs is due, not to the errors of statesmen dealing with specific problems, but to fundamentally unsound and irrealizable concepts in the general bases of the treaties.

Among the errors of the Paris settlement we can point out: (1) creating a League of Nations whose charter provides for the permanent hegemony of five nations, with widely divergent interests; (2) reserving the advantages of the treaties to a few nations but making all members of the League responsible for their execution; (3) treating the vanquished enemies as criminals without right to counsel or appeal to an impartial tribunal, but at the same time not providing jailers to keep them in prison during the period of punishment; (4) denying the principle of reciprocity in contractual obligations; (5) declaring that the treaties are based upon the policy of freeing peoples from alien rule, but limiting the application of the policy to a few especially favored peoples, and violating it in other cases; (6) failing to apply one weight and one measure in passing upon the claims to reparations of peoples who had suffered in the World War through aggression,603 invasion, and the violation of international law; and (7) maintaining the old balance of power theory.

When we analyze the treaty, and study the course of the negotiations, we see that the first six errors are the children, that is, the outgrowth, of the seventh. It is possible to explain all the treaties by keeping in mind that the dominating idea of the Peace Conference was the recognition of the transcendent rights of the powers that had big armies and navies. The battle had been to the strong; so likewise should be the spoils. A new balance of power had to be created by virtue of which the strong could remain permanently strong by compounding their rivalries and by allowing one another strategic frontiers and the privilege of forming new international combinations for the purpose of keeping weak the peoples that had been conquered. The methods of waging war and of gauging strength, however, had radically changed during the nineteenth century. No longer were man-power and geographical position decisive elements. Coal, iron, oil, and access to food-stuffs and raw materials had become vital factors in the power of nations.

Far from being discouraged by the alarming condition of international relations five years after the war, we should feel relieved that we have been afforded a salutary demonstration of604 the futility of the Paris peace settlement at so little cost. If our eyes are now opened to the dangers of the international game, as it has been played since 1918, there is yet a chance to mend our ways before irreparable damage is done. Most of those who are writing on European politics are neither cynics nor pessimists, and they do not record the failure of these years with ghoulish delight. In discussing the possible dangers ahead they do not relish the rôle of Cassandra. The purpose of writing is to show how policies, approved in the beginning by public opinion, are likely to work out. Is the game worth the candle? That is for the reader to decide.

The twofold mandate from voters to those who represent them in matters of foreign policy is: make us secure, and make us prosper. That is why the struggle for the possession of coal, iron, oil, and world markets, and not international coöperation as embodied in the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice, underlies the history of Europe since 1918, and furnishes an appallingly sordid explanation of the policies followed by European statesmen in the Saar, the Ruhr, Upper Silesia, Eastern Galicia, the Banat of Temesvár, the Donetz region of Ukrainia, the Caucasus, northern Persia, and the Mosul region of Turkey. If Germany and Russia could be permanently deprived of the resources essential605 to war that abound in these disputed territories, their man-power would count for little. They would be reduced to a state of vassalage, and the strength of the nations possessing or controlling these regions would be correspondingly increased.

Under the spell of this idea France is trying to reconstruct Europe, and she has been able to find support for her policy among those to whom German and Russian coal, iron, and oil have been allotted, and to whom German and Russian sea-ports and provinces have been given. In the Near East France was willing to let Great Britain have a free hand in the Caucasus and Persia and to sacrifice the right to Mosul recognized in the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. To Rumania were handed over Bessarabia and the iron and coal in Temesvár. Germany’s coal supplies passed under Franco-Polish control, and the French hope that Poland has become by the possession of Upper Silesia and Eastern Galicia a state strong enough to be a permanent barrier between Germany and Russia. As an additional safeguard against the regrouping of the Teutonic element in central Europe and its contact with Hungary and Russia, the Little Entente was formed.

For France the next move in the international game is to settle the reparations question with606 Germany and to make peace with Russia in such a way that Germany will lose control of her essential resources for war making and will be cut off permanently from the temptation of forming with Russia an alliance to shake off the stranglehold of the victors in the World War upon these two powers. France believes that Great Britain’s interests in Asia and her anxiety to prevent Germany from making another effort to compete with her for world markets and the carrying trade will eventually induce the British to acquiesce in the French scheme for a new European balance of power directed against both Germany and Russia.

The flaw in the French program is the failure to realize that France’s control of the Rhineland and the Ruhr and the dependence of Poland upon her give rise to the suspicion that her aim is the military and economic domination of Europe. The protestation or the fact of innocence of any such plan makes no difference to those who fear it. France has a great reservoir of African troops. With control of German coal and with Poland as a vassal she will be in a more advantageous position to impose her will upon Europe than Germany was in 1914, with Austria-Hungary as a vassal. The control of the Ruhr mines and factories will inevitably cause other European607 states to combine with Great Britain against France as they combined in the decade preceding the World War against Germany.

Great Britain is in an unhappy frame of mind over the political and economic situation of Europe. To get France out of the Ruhr and to release the hold of France on Germany, British public opinion is prepared to forgive the French debt—and the other interallied debts, for that matter. It is more important for Great Britain to-day than ever that no power dominate Continental Europe. The British are eager for the return of normal economic conditions and the restoration of their European markets. Outside Europe they have made many sacrifices, as in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and India, to get rid of military burdens and financial outlay by adopting an attitude of compromise toward demands of native populations for self-government. The imperialism of British foreign policy after the World War was, as we have seen, very quickly checked. British public opinion is alive to the danger of disregarding the aspirations of Asiatic and African peoples, and is prepared to go to almost any length to keep together the empire that has been centuries in the building. The greatest difficulty ahead for Great Britain comes from the insistent demand of Continental European608 countries that the world’s raw materials be pooled and that equality of access to them be granted by the great colonial power.

Italy’s next move in the international game is undoubtedly along the line of unhampered access to raw materials in Asia, and Africa, and Australia, and unrestricted emigration to the United States and the British Dominions. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that Italy stands in the same relation to the outside world in which Germany and Japan stand. The three great powers have become industrial nations with a rapidly growing population, and to exist and prosper they must import raw materials and food-stuffs and export manufactured goods. They need also an outlet for surplus population and opportunities for capital investment in countries where such investment helps their trade. There would have been no World War had not Germany felt herself deprived of “her place in the sun.” Other nations were ahead of her in preëmpting colonizing areas and the regions upon which Europe could draw for raw materials and rely for markets. The war did not solve Germany’s problem. It was her own fault, we can assert, and leave it at that. But how about Italy and Japan, our comrades in arms? Their need of world-wide equality for trade and emigration are as great as Germany’s,609 and they have not forfeited consideration of their claims, as Germany has done. On the contrary, they have a greater claim to the consideration of the more fortunate powers than they had a few years ago.

In attempting to put into one volume the eventful story of Europe since 1918 we have given very little space to the League of Nations and the United States; for during these years neither one nor the other has had a vital part in European affairs. What the future will bring forth none knows. But it is safe to venture the prophecy that Europe will successfully solve her own problems as she had done in the past, and that the rôle played by the League of Nations and the Permanent Court of International Justice will be negligible compared with the individual rôles of France and Great Britain. These two colonial powers hold in their hands the raw materials upon which all Europe except Russia and the Balkans depends for its well-being. What will be the colonial policy of Great Britain and France toward other European nations, especially toward Italy and Germany? What will be their policy toward Japan? Does not the peace of the world depend upon how the colonial powers will solve the problem of giving to Italy, Germany, and Japan a fair share in the privilege of developing610 and trading with Asia, Africa, and other parts of the world over which fly the British and French flags?

If Russia were still an ally of France and Great Britain, in sympathy with the doctrine that to those who have should be given and from those who have not should be taken even that which they have, the danger of a war over raw materials and trade and emigration outlets would not be imminent. As matters now stand earnest men should not be devoting all their attention and effort to creating and maintaining machinery to prevent war when no serious attention is being paid to the great cause of war, which is, in our generation, inequality in trade, colonization, and investment opportunities among powers of equal size, strength, standard of living, and productive capacity.

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